"Luxury"

LleidaThis article was supposed to be about the World Cup. I wanted to write about eleven millionaire teenagers chasing a ball, about planes, stadiums, travel, and the ecological footprint of a competition that moves the world while the planet struggles to keep spinning. It was supposed to be an easy article: get angry at people very far away so I wouldn't have to look too closely at myself. But on Saturday, Choco died.

Antonio Megías was fifty years old and had dedicated a large part of his life to sports and cultural journalism. We called him Choco; his family and other friends, Toño. Perhaps he had two names because one alone was not enough to encompass all the people who loved him.

By the way, I don't like sports. However, some of the few sports articles I've read were yours. He spoke of Olympic athletes and World Cup footballers, but not of medals, records, or results. He wrote about defeats, injustices, fears, and second chances. He didn't explain athletes, but human beings to whom, among many other things, sports had happened.

We became intimate, even though for the last five years life had been driving us apart. We remained friends; we simply no longer saw each other: a slow and absurd way of losing someone without having decided to leave. Choco suggested several times that we go for some beers. But I always had work.

Work is a magnificent excuse because it seems like an obligation and prevents us from admitting that, too often, we don't know how to distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. I didn't find an hour to share a meal with him, but I did find one to say goodbye to him at the funeral home. I arrived on time for the only appointment that could no longer be postponed. There is something profoundly wrong with this: we end up reserving for farewells the time we should have shared before.

The funeral home was full. Choco had a strange quality: everyone felt special around him. We all thought he appreciated us in a particular way, and surely it was true. He didn't divide affection, he multiplied it. He was a free spirit, an insatiable reader, and one of those people who improve any place just by their presence. When you proposed something to him, when he liked an idea, or when life seemed to fall into place, he would reply: «De lujo».

Perhaps I will watch the World Cup. Not for the football, but to look for the people hiding behind the jerseys, just as he used to do. Choco has managed it again: he has turned an article about sport into a human story. It would have been "great" to explain it to him over a beer. But I postponed an hour with him so many times that now I have all my life left to miss him.