I was in a red Volvo the moment Tim Duncan entered my life. Other details of that day have long faded into limbo, but I’ll never forget sitting in the caked, cracked leather of that passenger seat as my dad and I navigated the streets of San Antonio, the 1997 NBA Draft Lottery on the radio. I didn’t know much about Duncan except that everyone in town was excited about Duncan, which is more than enough when you’re nine years old. As David Stern ticked off team after team, whittling the final two picks down to Philadelphia and San Antonio, my dad pulled that red Volvo on to the shoulder. When Stern revealed Philadelphia as the No. 2 pick, we exploded like shotgun blasts of confetti.

The following spring, I watched the Jazz knock the Spurs out of the playoffs, the third Spurs season in five years to meet that particular end, and marched to my room, black Sharpie in hand, and blacked out the state of Utah on an oversized United States map hanging on my bedroom wall. Duncan never lost to the Jazz again, but the map and its 49 states remained until I moved out.

Sequestered away at summer camp, I never saw the Spurs win their first championship. The object of every birthday wish, the dream I’d waited 11 years for — 11 years feels like a lifetime when you’re 11 years old — a Spurs championship, was spoiled for me by some kid at the next dinner table over. Visual proof had to wait until my mom brought a newspaper on move out day.

I marked Game 1 of the 2003 Finals with two milestones: my first trip to Six Flags without parental supervision, and my first group outing where the presence of females was deemed important to the trip’s success.

We took a family trip to the Bahamas during the 2005 Finals. My parents decided that was the time to tell my sister and I they were separating. Robert Horry singlehandedly saving Game 5 was the only souvenir I kept from that trip. I watched Games 6 and 7 at my girlfriend’s house. I wanted to be far away from home as possible. In front of a TV, watching Duncan win his third, was far enough.

Somewhere along the line we left San Antonio for Dallas, so it was me and 80 Mavericks fans watching Game 7 of the 2006 Spurs-Mavericks brawl, in some sports bar in the Florida Panhandle, on our way to our senior trip, that I saw Duncan lose at the peak of his powers with 80 sets of hands to rub it in my face.

My parents reconciled in time for the 2007 Finals, and the three of us pilgrimaged back to San Antonio for Game 1, the first step in the journey to ring four. They were separated again during the 2008 playoffs, so my dad and I watched Duncan beat Chris Paul in a Game 7 in New Orleans from an empty bar in the middle of Texas as I drove home from college for the summer.

I celebrated the newfound freedom of a 21st birthday as the Spurs lost again to the Mavericks in 2009.

I washed away the disappointment of losing to Memphis in Round One of the 2011 playoffs by welcoming my first child a few weeks later.

Sitting in the NICU of an unfamiliar hospital, passing the time while doctors and nurses cared for my son, born before he could teach himself to breathe, I watched Duncan open the 2013 playoffs against the Lakers. The game was on before I got there, as if someone knew it would help in some minuscule way to have Tim there with me. Two months later, I held that healthy child, mindful of the cargo in my arms, staring in abject horror as Ray Allen dropped in the most famous 3-pointer in NBA history — a shot only possible because Duncan wasn’t there to stop it.

A year later, Duncan secured his revenge and his fifth and final ring. We completed our family the following year. We each knew how lucky we were to collect that final piece, and cherished ours all the more so.

Life changed in every way imaginable from Duncan’s arrival to his retirement — moves and graduations, marriage and divorce, births and deaths. Through it all, Duncan was there, hugging the ball before every game, in the exact same uniform for 19 straight years. He was there for when life slowed down enough to watch a random Tuesday night game in Milwaukee, and he was there every single spring for the playoffs. Timmy was always there.

The only people in my life on a current, daily basis from 1997 to today were my father, my mother, my sister, and Tim Duncan. And even some of the former three faded in and out over the years. But now he’s gone, and I don’t remember a life without him.

I was in third grade as I sat in that red Volvo on that spring day in 1997. My daughter begins kindergarten next month. When news of Duncan’s retirement became official on Monday morning, a lifetime flashed before my eyes. Not his, but my own.