Staff Photo by Tim Barber Mark Mariakis, Ridgeland head coach.

An easy smile spread across the well-tanned face of Mark Mariakis as he pondered the question.

It was the smile of a man completely comfortable with his life. And why not? He is a well-respected professional, having coached the Ridgeland Panthers to the school's first region football championship last fall. He and his wife, Debbie, soon will celebrate a 24th wedding anniversary, and their two daughters are his main source of pride.

Since undergoing surgery to remove a benign brain tumor in March, leaving him permanently deaf in one ear, he has a renewed vigor. Thus the simple question and its resulting smile: How special is this Father's Day to you?

"Very meaningful," Mariakis said in his family room with Debbie and daughters Christa and Kelly nearby. "When you're in a situation when there is always a doubt or a possibility of not seeing another Father's Day ... with the surgery we had, it was one of those many things you don't take for granted anymore."

The Mariakis family didn't need a crisis to come together. They relax together, eat dinner together and go to church together. They're staples in the community, frequently sharing their free time for good causes.

Yet the close call has taken them to a new level of closeness.

"We've always been tight, but it has brought us closer," Debbie said. "It definitely puts into perspective that anything can happen. When you go through life, particularly at a younger age, you think you're invincible. When something like this happens, it pulls families together."

Added Kelly: "We've learned to cherish every moment we have together. This Father's Day will be exciting. It will mean more to just have him here and know he's OK and everything is fine."

Mark Mariakis admits facing his mortality came as both a shock and an eye-opener. What started out as a ringing in his ear two years ago grew into an Acoustic Nuroma tumor, something that afflicts just five out of every million people.

He first heard the word "tumor" around Christmas from Chattanooga physician Doug Liening of the Ear, Nose and Throat Center. Mariakis, like most would, feared the worst. He went suddenly from thinking he would get a diagnosis of an ear infection to thinking over and over again, "Brain tumor."

"You just can't believe you have a brain tumor," he said. "A thousand things ran through my head. I always thought I was pretty strong with dealing with adversity, because that's part of my job being a coach and teacher. We've gone through some tough situations family wise, so I've been there and done that dealing with the storm of life. But then, to realize it could just be over in a blink of the eye, you get those moments in life that are life-changing. When you hear words like tumor, death and things like that, you realize how quick life is."

If anything has overwhelmed the family, it's been the outpouring of support. The e-mails became so numerous that Debbie had to start a Facebook account to answer them all.

"At the peak, we were getting hundreds and sometimes thousands of e-mails each day," Mark said. "Debbie was bombarded while we were in L.A. There were guys I coached at Lakeview who I hadn't talked to in years who called me, and that meant so much. Churches in the entire Chattanooga area were having prayer vigils for us.

"Believe me, the prayers were felt and answered. That's how you get that peace that, hey, it's going to be OK. I had a real peace when I was being wheeled back to surgery that the girls would be taken care of and Debbie was going to be taken care of, no matter what happened to me."

Mariakis will have an MRI next March, then another in four years. If both are clean, doctors tell him, the tumor will not return. The loss of hearing, though, is something he'll have to adjust to, and even now he and Debbie are finding a bright side.

"It's got its advantages," Mark said with a smile, looking at his wife. "When I lay on my good ear, I can't hear snoring at night, so I have more peaceful sleep now."

Added Debbie, laughing: "He will only hear half the crowd this year at games."

Summer workouts have begun for the Panthers, and preseason camp opens soon. Though he doesn't foresee any change in the way he coaches, Mariakis believes he has been given an opportunity to teach more than X's and O's.

"It will give me a chance to maybe reach more kids," he said. "When I was in school, the coaches were always the invincible ones. Kids always hear, 'This could be your last ballgame, so play all out.' Well, it could have been my last ballgame. It wasn't just one of those pregame or halftime speeches. it really happened.

"It could make the difference in one kid, you know, not just assuming everything is always going to be OK and you've always got tomorrow. If one kid can grab that, it will have been worth it."

As if they needed another reminder, the fragility of life hit home again for the family this past week when Christa was involved in an automobile accident. Though she escaped without major injuries -- a broken nose was the worst of it -- the incident only reinforced what Mark Mariakis already understood all too well.

"You get that phone call you're never ready for -- your child is screaming and crying," he said, trying to hold his emotions in check. "You get there and there is blood all over the place and ... you know, it can go by pretty quick.

"Don't miss a moment."