Diogo, Grief and What Awaits After the Final Whistle.

My first notification about Diogo Jota - WTF indeed.

For anyone carrying a recent loss, whether shared, personal, or still unspoken.

I was sitting at my work computer when I got the WhatsApp message. Just a photo of Diogo with the dates of his birth and death (the photo accompanying this article).

‘Wtf!’ accompanied the image. It was a message from Gabriel. He’s half Brazilian, half Portuguese, lives in Lisbon like me, and kind of follows Liverpool as his second team, mostly through me. We don’t text often, so when he sends something, it’s usually for a reason.

He’s not one for hyperbole or clickbait. I knew it was true before I even opened my LFC WhatsApp groups. I didn’t reply to him. I still haven’t. It’s still sitting there as the last digital interaction between the two of us. What was there to say? I was numb.

It’s strange, feeling that kind of grief for someone you’ve never met.

I remember being on a cruise ship in 1997, working as a croupier, and being asked by passengers how I felt about Princess Diana dying. I shrugged. “I didn’t know the lady.”

It probably sounded a little callous. But at the time, I couldn’t connect with it. Three years earlier though, when Kurt Cobain killed himself, I felt it. I can still remember the exact moment. I was sitting in the living room at 3 Bedford Drive watching the telly, the phone rang. It was my mate Doddy, who never usually rang me. He just announced “Kurt’s dead.”

I didn’t believe him, and I didn’t have the instant feedback of Whatsapp at the time, and so I had to check to see if it was true through Teletext. For non-Brits of a certain age this was a one-sided basic internet with big block graphics and text that you accessed through your TV. Does anyone remember Bamboozle? No? It was a fun quiz game on… no, okay. I’ll get back to the story then.

The week I found out about Jota was pretty rough all round. A few days earlier my sister's partner impaled himself on his own fence while trimming rose bushes. The spike missed a main artery by millimetres.

The following day, my 87-year-old dad was rushed to hospital. Unresponsive. Pneumonia and sepsis, they said. He’s home now, thankfully. Bit of a Lazarus act. Not for the first time.

A few days later, my cousin messaged. Her dad, my uncle, had passed away in his sleep that morning.

My Uncle and I hadn’t spoken in years. He’d fallen out with me over my political views, and as such he’d unfriended me on Facebook. It was a silly reason, but I never made the first move to patch things up.

He was a big Red, my Uncle. Hated Brendan Rodgers. He had a sharp, proper old-school footy brain, fashioned while under the tutelage of Shankly, Paisley, Ruben Bennett et al.

He was adamant we should sell Suarez, and build the team around Andy Carroll (I didn’t say he was infallible). He coached at a good level while living in Spain too. He predicted Jurgen Klopp to be a success from the off.

My most vivid memory is sitting in his front room, laughing our arses off at Jasper Carrott, me and my young cousin on the floor, him on the couch, guffawing like a bastard.

In hindsight I wish I’d reached out. But I didn’t.

In the last week, we’ve lost Joey Jones, Ozzy Osbourne, and Hulk Hogan. I felt

second-hand sadness in all these cases, but nothing like the numbness I felt when I heard about Diogo Jota.

I’ve felt that same numbness since. It comes in sporadic flashes, usually triggered by a video or photo popping up on social media when I least expect it. I can’t see that being the case with the others that left us in the last week.

Why is that?

Maybe it’s his youth. Jota was only 28. A year older than Kurt when he died. Perhaps it’s the same feeling of unfinished business. Or maybe it’s how sudden and senseless it all was. Driving back to pre-season. A normal day. Just gone.

Or maybe, and this is what I keep coming back to, it’s about the potential memories that we’ve lost. The potential moments which will never be. The hilarious take on Trump’s presidency by Bill Hicks. That lost Michael Stipe/Kurt Cobain collaboration. That last minute Jota worldy that sees us lift the Champions League Trophy for the 7th time.

And what’s it like for the family? Is it a blessing or a curse that there’s reams of footage out there, all over the internet: interviews, goals caught on tape, clips of spontaneous hilarity in the LFC TV archives.

I’d imagine that’s a double-edged sword. Beautiful if you’re in the mood to reminisce that you can pull up some HD footage of your loved one, but painful if you’re just after a mindless scroll of your phone at the end of the day, and up pops a video of Diogo’s signing day video, walking up to camera and in his best scouse accent announcing “what’s ‘appenin’?“.

A short but profound clip that demonstrates instantly the personality of the man we’ve lost. It’s in these little clips that someone like me, with no real connection, has felt a sudden pang of sadness from out of nowhere. I’d imagine this is experienced times a thousand for those who knew him, and a thousand times more than that for close family and friends.

I’ve never been scared of death. In my cold, logical atheistic years between 10-40, I’d insist that when I die to just burn me on a pyre. No point in fuss.

Then I had an encounter with Bufo Alvarius, aka 5-MeO-DMT at an Ayahuasca retreat in Barcelona in November 2018. And suddenly I knew, not believed, that death isn’t the end. That where I went on that journey is where I believe we all end up eventually.

Spoiler: A sea of infinite, unconditional love. The place where all possibility originates, and we merge into that unified field of energy that particle physicists are so desperate to find.

So when my Mum died a few months later, and I saw her body resting in the chapel of the funeral home, I wasn’t overcome with grief. I knew she wasn’t in that vessel anymore. That wasn’t her. The light that was her had disappeared.

Funnily, my position on being chucked on a bonfire when I die hasn’t changed. I just have vastly different reasons why now.

And maybe that’s why I am able to process death without breaking, but I still feel the ache of all the things left unsaid. The loss of memories that could have been, had this timeline chosen another fate.

If you’ve read this far, you probably have some inkling of what I’m talking about.

Diogo played football at the highest possible level, winning some of the highest accolades, found the love of his life, and left a beautiful and adoring family in his wake, along with a trail of broken hearts. A testament to how much of a success he was at this thing called life.

He may have gone too soon, but no one can say he didn’t live his best life while he was here. So to anyone reading this: make sure when you shift on from this mortal coil, you can say that while you had this rare opportunity to occupy your meat suit, that you lived your best life too.

The ones who’ve passed on don’t carry regrets. They’ve gone back to where there’s only love, and there, there’s no room for judgement. The regrets are ours, the ones left behind, still mourning the future we imagined. The one we feel robbed of.

So if you have something left unsaid, and it’s weighing on you, say it while they're still here. Not for them, but for you.

YNWA Diogo.

YNWA Uncy Vic.