And his name is Diogo

Awoke to the shocking news that Diogo Jota (28), a Liverpool footballer, had been killed in a car crash in northern Spain, along with his brother André Silva (26), who was also a professional footballer. When so many tragedies are going on around the world and, indeed people on here are mourning the loss of their loved ones, it seems rather odd to admit to being a little bit shaken by the death of celebrity. Yet, there is no doubt about it, I am a bit shaken. He was someone I had never met; someone I had no connection with outside of being insanely happy every time he scored a goal. Yet, I am sad and a little bit “hollow”.
 
There are two things to unpack here. First, why does this make me sad when the devastating, incomprehensible events in Gaza and the Ukraine just make me angry? How can the slaughter of the innocents affect me seemingly less than the death of a privileged footballer? I suppose this comes down to the proximity of it. With Gaza, I can vent my anger elsewhere and it doesn’t affect me personally on a daily basis. Well, it does, but I imagine I have managed to shield myself from it, same as with Ukraine. Theirs is a distant tragedy, far away. There’s a line in the song “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House: “In the paper today, tales of war and of waste / But you turn right over to the TV page.” And it’s a little bit that: the murder and genocide is on the main pages of the newspaper – or website – but you can always flick to the sports page to find out how Liverpool have been doing. Except now, of course, the tales of death are on the back page too.
 
And then there is the question of why this upsets me when I didn’t know him? I think a lot of this is down to the fact that he was so young and so healthy. You get used to the idea that older people die – or even that people get ill and pass away; there is a process through which you acclimatise to the event, protect yourself against it. Yet, with accidents involving young people (he was 28), that is an impossibility. How can someone so vibrant suddenly not be there any more? It all seems so pointless, so hopeless. And it makes a mockery of my vision of the world because it is all so random. A tyre blowing out on an expensive car and suddenly two men are dead. Their families are devastated; children grow up fatherless; wives and parents are left to grieve. Because of a tyre.
 
And, of course, I did know him. I welcomed him into my home twice a week and have done since he joined Liverpool in September 2020. He provided me with some moments of intense pleasure (that last minute winner against Spurs, for example) and frustration. I felt like I knew him, even though I obviously never met him in person. I’m saddened by his death. And my close call with the Elderly Chinese Lady yesterday was a vivid reminder of how we are all hanging on by a thread.
 
Spent much of the day in a strange kind of funk, which was sort of alleviated by taking Mrs. Ottawacker up to Manotick for an appointment with a dermatologist. Ottawacker Jr. and I decided to make a day of it, or at least an hour, so went with her. There, while she was waiting in a well-appointed waiting room, we had a hot sandwich from Morning Owl, and then wandered up to the local church, which has an outstanding second-hand bookshop. How outstanding? Well, outstanding enough for me to scoop Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places, Harry Freedman’s biography of Leonard Cohen, a translation of Brecht’s Im Dickicht der Städte, a bunch of novels, some Hardy Boys hardbacks for Ottawacker Jr., and other sundry stuff and still have change left over from $35. This didn’t make up for Mrs. Ottawacker being told the removal of her blocked cyst wasn’t covered by OHIP and would cost her $1500, but every little helps.