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Sean Taylor's funeral

Lingering on the Bills game would be a bad idea because of the outcome and also because football games really aren't that important, even when playoff hopes depend on the result, even Super Bowls. Being alive is important. I write a Redskins blog -- and not a politics blog, or spiritual blog, or physics blog -- because I enjoy spending my free time focusing on trivial matters, such as the overuse of explosiveness to describe football players or an eBay Redskins safari. I also choose to write about the trivial because I'm ill-equipped to speak profoundly on matters that deserve such treatment. I lack profundity. I am not a profound person.

Sometimes something horrible happens and my love of football is interrupted by an important event and I am thrust into the uncomfortable position of trying to say the right thing without being capable of doing so. I don't like writing about death because it is more important than football. I also hate funerals.

Sean's was today and by all accounts it was a successful funeral. There were some laughs, some remembrance, some semblance of closure (though much is pending from the Florida Judicial system) was had, and of course, many tears shed. Redskins Insider was there to cover the entire event and has the details. The people who knew Sean Taylor had much to say about him as a person; actually knowing Sean Taylor would tend to make someone uniquely qualified on the quality of their character. The raises the question why so many people felt compelled, even before Taylor had succumbed to an existential crisis, to speak against that character for no good reason. There is a lesson here.

RI is jam packed with the details of the funeral including commentary on those who spoke. I'm entitled to an opinion on funerals and I don't much care for them, precisely because they are deeply personal and awfully depressing. If I had my druthers, funerals would be exclusively about remembering awesomeness by eskewing the tragic, but that's just me. Many people spoke eloquently at Sean's funeral, many tears were shed, and please, by all means, go to Redskins Insider to find out more. I like to remember the positive more than dwell on the tragedy, so I quote only Sean's uncle, from here, who succintly reminded why people like me, thousands of miles away with no connection whatsoever to Sean Taylor the person>, so loved to watch him play:

Michael Outar, Sean's uncle, spoke of Sean as a little boy with so much energy that the family decided to sign him up for football to give him an outlet. Outar wanted him to be No. 32, but, because he was bigger than the other kids, the coach gave him No. 66 and put him on the line. "Before the game he looked at me and said, "Uncle Mike, what do I do? I said, 'You hit the guy with the ball.' And that's what he did. Over and over and over."
He sure fucking did.

Hail The Boom King.