A former player of mine — I coached for 10 years, largely throughout college. But a former player of mine died recently. Dropped dead about five months before his wedding. He was engaged to be married. He was healthy, or appeared to be, and he just dropped dead. Age 31, he was gone.
And of course, it’s brutal. It’s all of the things. But one of the silver linings, I guess, was having the chance to reconnect with so many people that I hadn’t seen for many many years for his funeral. Which, it just — it feels weird to say, like, “Yeah, the good news about his funeral is…”
Um, but you know, it really was something that like — it made me think, like, I’m sure that wasn’t a unique experience. I haven’t lost a lot of people in my age range at this point. And of course 31 is even, uh, before my age range. But I know it’s not a unique story, but, uh — and maybe that’s what funerals are supposed to do, to bring us all together and remember that we have each other while paying respects to those we have lost.
And so being able to see so many familiar faces from all my years in, in basketball in my, in my home town — people I hadn’t seen in over 10 years, in some cases 15, and some I hadn’t even spoken to on the internet even, through social media or otherwise, in almost just as long — it was, um, good. It was healing. It was a lot of things. And you know, it certainly helped, uh, helped me cope with the loss of someone special.