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Austin Cornilles's avatar

Wow, one of the best written pieces on how sports intersect with life. So sorry for your loss

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Andrew's avatar

October 31, 2015 - The men's Rugby World Cup Final. I'd only be living with my gf (now wife) for about 6 months and she was still nowhere near getting rugby. But I loved it, and she loves me, so she was trying.

We had just got done watching New Zealand beat Australia for their second straight title. I went to our bedroom and found my phone which had a dozen missed calls, and I knew what they were. I called Mom. Papaw had been sick for a a few years now, and in the hospital the last week.

As I stood there listening to mom, my wife gave me that questioning look. I just nodded, and she went straight to our room and started throwing clothes in a bag. I got off the phone with Mom and called my brother. Him and his wife were grabbing the van at Mom's house, grabbing my sister and then-BIL.

We met them at my wife's sister's house, which was thankfully a convenient meeting place where the two sets of kids' paths would converge. We ditched our car with my SiL and the six of us drove on through the middle of the night from Iowa to southern Indiana.

We got to the hospital about 1AM. Mom and Dad had thankfully already been there to help Mamaw around the house that week. My uncle (Dad's Brother) and aunt had similarly hauled ass over from Virginia in the evening.

Somewhere around 4AM Papaw passed.

To some people watching old matches might sound weird, but some of them are great. 2009 Ireland-Wales I spent with my teammates in a tiny flat near St. James's hospital huddled around a tiny screen while O'Gara's drop goal cleared the bar while Stephen Jones's penalty didn't. 2015 Japan at the horn to upset South Africa is another. I have a folder on my media server of about a dozen old matches of the ones that still excite me, sometimes 15 years later.

But that match is one I will never, ever be able to watch again.

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