I wrote about him the day after he died – rambling, incoherent probably; there is something unnatural about trying to find words about turning a person you were actively working with into something past tense overnight. But it felt important to do it then and not to let the moment pass without marking who he was.
Today is his funeral and there is a heaviness to this I can’t even begin to put into words. His birthday was the day after mine. He died on the same anniversary of my Labrador’s birthday. It’s a strange thread to notice, but it’s there. One of those small, almost impossible alignments that quietly sits in the background of something much bigger. It doesn’t mean anything in a grand sense, but it is hard to ignore.
What is harder to take in is that he is gone. Because he was such a thinker and doer; even in the hospice, he was still himself. Still engaged talking about the project and setting up a video call with someone we both agreed could help us. Still someone you expected to hear from again. There was nothing about him that felt finished and then, suddenly, he was gone…
I keep thinking about the ordinary things. The messages. The rhythm of work. The way conversations would just pick back up.
“I’m around for a catch up if you’re free.”
It is such a simple line. The kind you barely register at the time. The kind you assume there will always be more of; but I know there won’t be and that leaves a huge gap.
Not that I don’t have other work to get on with, but his project was different; nostalgia meets modern day nagivation and sustainable trading. Working with him wasn’t transactional. He wasn’t just another founder, another project; he was someone who showed up properly. Conversations had weight and purpose. You knew you were speaking to someone who cared about what he was building and how he was doing it. That is what stays.
And today, all of that sits alongside something much more immediate: his wife is saying goodbye to her soulmate, carrying a child who will be born into a world where their father is only spoken about, not seen, hugged or heard. There is no way that even makes sense, so there is no point trying…
So today is just about marking the moment for what it is. Someone I worked with, respected, and genuinely liked as a person, is being laid to rest – far too soon.
And the only thing I feel capable of saying, on a day like today : I can’t believe you’re gone, but please know that what you have left isn’t something the tide can take back. It’s set like a bearing at sea, fixed, something those who knew you will navigate by for the rest of their lives.
RIP mon ami.
I know you’re watching over us.
