Rather than continue to sit on the floor holding my dog and crying I’d thought I’d write to my friends.  The loss is still hard to accept, to comprehend, to move on from.  It’s not the loss of a simple game it’s the loss of something bigger & intangible – the deep hope & optimism we all held all season.  We love this team:  The talent is obvious, the camaraderie infectious, the play exciting, the individual player’s stories compelling.   

I’ve been reading a new analysis of the Iliad.  Ya, a new analysis of a 3 century old Homeric epic seems dry, but it’s the draw of a great tragedy that’s kept the story alive.  Homer didn’t write the story, he wrote down a much older story – a tragedy in the wrapping of a military excursion. 

With all due respect, homage, and bottomless gratefulness to our friends in the military who deal with the real martial tragedy (and I recommend Jimmy Doolittle’s autobiography “I Could Never Be So Lucky Again” or a visit to the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior, WI for a reality check of true sacrifice and mortality) for many of us the veil of civility lets us put our definition of tragedy on a much less mortal scale.    So with that veil in place I proceed. 

Friends at Vikings Valhalla are posting one word sentiments about the game because the loss feels too big to put into words, but we want to express – exorcize, really – the pain.   It is painful today.  I couldn’t sleep last night and am weepy today.  I’ve heard similar stories from friends and family all over the country this morning.  God, we really believed, didn’t we? 

Is the tragedy that we lost or that we believed so hard that this time, this team, would win?   Like the Iliad, the story of this Vikings team is one of amazing and beloved characters who fought so hard for each other, for victory, and in the end did not win.  Again.  The Iliad speaks to me because Achilles knew his fate.  Everyone in the story knew Achilles would be greater than his father but would, as a direct result, have a shortened life.  And yet he fought.  That was his fate. 

We (yes, damnit –‘we’ – we who believed with and in the team) didn’t win but we almost did.  The team fought and lost.  The tragedy is the pain that comes from having believed that we would win.  It’s not that this season was predetermined like Achilles end, but that this season marched forward without regard to the pain that comes in the end.  It is heart wrenching, isn’t it? 

Listen, I’m not Homer.  This loss isn’t Iliadic in scope.  I may read this tomorrow and roll my eyes at the emotional hyperbole.  It hurts, though.   To my friends at Vikings Valhalla I say I will cry today and believe again.