On one end I lose my Grandmther who lived 75 years and succumbed to congestive heart failure, we knew her death was inevitable, but the hurt we feel isn’t.

At the other end, I lost a friend that I watched grow up who went home with a woman that he knew one night, while they were having sex here boyfriend came in (she never told him that he had a key) and she cries rape. The boyfriend hits him with a hammer (knocking him out) and beat him to death with a shovel.

I’m a year older than Steve McNair, and you think about your own mortality and how we tend to look at their stature and saw “How can this happen to them?” You realize that they’re ordinary people like us that just happen to do extraordinary things.

Matthew 24:7-8

7.For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

8. ALL THESE ARE THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS.

Here’s my post from SOMM which is appropriate here as well:

RIP to Air McNair…damn, I’ve been typing a variation on that epitaph too much lately.

I think we all can deal with the concept of death after a certain age but the relative youth and/or situations under which some of these celebrities have passed has been astonishing. We’re human so yes, we will speculate as to the circumstances under which some of these people lived and died but it still galls when the blurb flashes on the news crawl that a relatively young person who we know vicariously dies.

McNair dying hits close to home for me because like hiim I’m the product of an HBCU but also because he was three years younger than me which reminds me of my own mortality. Sports on a narrative level is all about stories. McNair’s story was memorable for where he came from and what he accomplished despite people considered more knowledgeable than us peons, who don’t know any better, said and did to blunt his ascendance to the highest levels. That intestinal toughness is what I’ll always remember about Air McNair more than any Super Bowl highlights because he was rock-solid on the field which is the lasting contribution he should be remembered for other than his children.

RIP to Air McNair again and nothing but heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, and fans.