There is a particular flavour of grief that sneaks up on you and lingers: a good friend gone far too soon, a dog taken on his last walk. The sort of double hit that makes even making a cup of tea feel like an administrative burden. So once you get to the point where your brain is too tired to hide in work, it’s just you, sitting on the sofa, wondering why… and then, completely unannounced, your phone pings.
Not a scam, or another reminder about your mobile contract renewal, but a real person. From rugby chat, someone you have not spoken to in a few days, popping up like the human equivalent of a well-timed interception.
You explain, briefly, why you have been off the radar; no grand speech, just the facts. Loss has a way of stripping the fluff out of conversation. To his credit, he did not try to fix anything: no motivational quotes, no “everything happens for a reason,” or “he had a good life” (which should frankly be a criminal offence in these situations). It was just kindness: simple, solid, quietly decent kindness.
And then you talk for hours about rugby; one of the few subjects that can sustain a conversation indefinitely without requiring emotional heavy lifting. The excitement of Stormers playing Warriors, bad captaincy choices, the return of Eben on Earth this weekend, the importance of having the right coach, how the Top14 finalists might just be allowed to do a summer tour. It is gloriously normal and so very comfortingly ordinary.
And that is the thing; it wasn’t some profound, life-changing exchange. It wasn’t therapy, it was just… nice. A few hours where your brain gets to wander somewhere that is not grief. Somewhere that does not involve absence or loss or the quiet echo of two souls who are no longer around. It is the conversational equivalent of someone handing you a cup of tea you did not ask for, but very much needed.
Life, for all its questionable decision-making lately, occasionally gets it right. It slips you a small moment of relief when you are not expecting it. Not a grand gesture or a solution, but just a pause that allows you to breathe; and a reminder that not everything is heavy all the time.
There is something slightly absurd about the fact that this moment of unexpected comfort comes via a rugby contact, a digital friend taking the time to send you a casual “you alive?” WA message that turns into a surprisingly lovely evening; the good stuff does not always arrive with fanfare; sometimes it just wanders in, sits down with a brandy and coke and starts talking about the upcoming weekend’s matches.
And for a little while, the clouds disappeared, so thank you Paul x
