When you can’t say goodbye

As I watched Liverpool stumble to another defeat at Leicester City, as a glory-hunting armchair Liverpool ‘fan’ who never goes to games and has no familial and geographical connection with the city, I naturally felt a smidgeon of disappointment. Ludicrously, I have at various stages referred to Liverpool as ‘us’ or ‘we’. What utter nonsense, but I really, really like them. Except manager Jürgen Klopp who I actually love. And once ‘we’ had lost, my disappointment quickly subsided. Because sometimes, football really doesn’t matter at all.

Klopp’s mother died in January and, to make matters even more upsetting and distressing, COVID rules meant that he could not attend her funeral. I’ve been to far too many funerals over the years but at least I had the opportunity to say goodbye to loved ones.

We’re coming to the tenth anniversary of my dad’s death and I remember how upsetting the news was. However, I was able to attend his funeral, in Ottawa, Canada, and bring home his ashes for scattering at Battery Point in Portishead, past which he had sailed many times in his life as a merchant navy officer. I felt that I had some kind of closure. I lived through the grieving process – my big emotional meltdown occurred at Heathrow Airport when I check in for my flight – and while the lost would be with me forever, I could see a way forward. Klopp had no such good fortune.

I arranged and of course attended the funerals of my mother and later my stepfather, both of which were desperately sad affairs due the paucity of the respective turn outs because they had outlived most family members and friends. Again, the grieving process and closure were both in my grasp. You do a lot of thinking when you lose a parent. When you cannot even attend a funeral, or even know when you will be able to return home and pay your respects, how awful will that be?

And this is another horrible effect of COVID-19. Not only are out lives standing still, we cannot even be with those we love when they are sick, dying or even dead.

My partner lost her mother to COVID and we were, in one small way, fortunate because she died at home in her own bed, not in some overstretched hospital ward, staffed by heroic NHS workers dressed from head to toe in PPE. We were also able to attend her funeral, reduced in size though it had to be. Even in grief, we knew we were the lucky ones.

I understand how things work with football, where people enjoy the schadenfreude almost as much as seeing their own team winning. I know because I have been there. Only, as I gradually became older and, dare I say it, wiser, glorying in the suffering and misery of others was no kind of glory at all. Moreover, it was a sad and pathetic trait I saw in myself. I could still manage a slight grin when Manchester United lost, but it didn’t stop me loving Marcus Rashford.

Football, in the grand scheme of things, really doesn’t matter that much. Games are still going on only for the benefit of broadcasters and pay TV subscribers. Although I want my teams to win, the disappointment of losing is more fleeting.

Jürgen Klopp reminded me of that. The team he has coached so brilliantly over many years appears mentally and physically weary and I suspect it’s not that different to how many of us feel as this wretched virus maintains is grisly grip on our lives. He managed to carry on coaching and managing the team, even when his mother was dying, knowing that he was helplessly trapped in Liverpool, unable to do anything about it.

This is the modern world in which we live, a dark, sombre, messed up world, turned upside down by a virus that has taken the lives of millions. And almost nothing, like the simple act of attending the funeral of a loved one, is permissible.

I’m still trying to take out all of the hate from my soul. It has not been easy during the last few years, but I can but try. My priorities are the same as ever: family and friends first. Anything else, especially football, can wait.