Sometimes one undertakes a simple journey without thought to perils that might intervene while we move from one place to another, as, say, from one's home to work, work to home, or even possibly from the beginning of a eulogy for a friend to the part where one might falter and be unable to continue for a moment... fate conspires against us, the unexpected announces itself, things don't go the way we planned. Sometimes these are the most minor of inconveniences, so trivial they are hard to even recall an hour later - and sometimes they are the stuff which still brings tears to our eyes after half a lifetime. These interventions, the simple expression of mathematical probabilities, chance and mischance, are nevertheless beyond our prediction, a broken lace, a wandering dog, someone wants to turn left... the minutia of days.
The effects of these mischances, most of no consequence... and yet some have a significance, an impact, that lays the cornerstone of a lasting regret.
But mischance and regret, these are not what Stu was about; what happened to him that afternoon says nothing about him - except he was there. Sadly, by coincidence, Stu was there.
He always was there, though - happily, and not by chance - for his family, for his friends, and us, his clubmates, and this does say something about him: as Wayne said, a genuinely positive force in the world, a truly good guy - missed immediately - and in the days to come.
