Mateo Ramírez has not stopped talking to his father. A year after his death, he feels that he, former soccer player Jhon Mario Ramírez, is still there, by his side, giving him advice, saying words of encouragement. She talks to him and tells him that she misses him, and asks him questions that remain unanswered. It’s her way of keeping him alive in her deep memory, even though she’s been gone for a year.
Mateo is filled with courage, the words come out with a bit of stoicism, that is how his father would have wanted him, to see him always strong, always courageous, as he was on the court. In any case, they are words that come galloping from within and come out in the form of memories and nostalgia. Mateo takes a deep breath and says, with the force of a voice that is not so strong: “This has been very hard, life changed us from heaven to earth… My dad is very much needed, you feel the emptiness, he spent a year and one believes that it did not happen”.
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The nostalgia of Mateo Ramírez for his father
Mateo did not want this moment to come, the time to remember it with more intensity than he remembers it every day: a year since that June 26, 2021 when the light of the crash faded on land, to shine somewhere, on some better court. Mateo did not want this month or this day to arrive, perhaps not even this call, because although memory is the only tribute that remains, he hits and hits.
“One of the worst days of my life is coming up,” he wrote on Twitter on June 17. And the day arrives. She knows it. She tries to take it in. His mind inevitably goes back, returns to that clinic, and sees him entering an Intensive Care Unit, in the midst of fighting covid-19, and remembers the anxiety he experienced, the anguish of seeing him there, those desperate calls to the clinic to ask how he was doing, and then he remembers the vain hope he had because covid was over, and then, suddenly, that other disease, Guillain-Barré, the one that attacks the peripheral nervous system.
One of the worst days of my life is coming, and these previous days have been worse or just as bad😓
– Mateo Ramirez Florez (@mateoRamirezFl1) June 17, 2022
Then, goodbye came. Only 49 years and goodbye. Jhon Mario, who began his first experience as DT in Patriotas de Tunja, went elsewhere with all his ball exploits. Mateo felt a slap of pain, but at the same time a break, he didn’t want to see him suffer anymore. But the nightmare, since then, does not stop being a nightmare. “Every day you say: ‘fucka, it really happened, it’s true…’ says Mateo, and yet he doesn’t believe what he says.
But when the void is so deep, Mateo fills it with memories, with teachings, he has thousands of those, Jhon left him many treasures. “I remember everything, like when he gave me advice, he was very affectionate, now I see him when he came into the room and talked to us and told us that he loved us. I miss his advice, talking to him, he cheered me up when I wasn’t feeling well, I miss spending time with him, watching a game together, going to eat…”, says Mateo.
He confesses that he thinks a lot about his dad, moreover, he assures that there are days when everything that happens to him has to do with him. He wonders what Jhon Mario would do in such a case, how Jhon Mario would act in this situation, what decisions he would make… And yes, Jhon Mario is absent, but Mateo feels him next to him, he feels that he walks with him, that he talks with him. the. He feels that he still watches football matches with him, that he plays football with him. There he is, running beside him, whispering in his ear to be strong, never to give up, to follow his dreams.
Mateo is a professional soccer player. Flyer 8. He describes himself as a very technical player, and why not, if his father was an artist of the ball, a painter of the game, so Mateo makes his brush strokes. He also says that he is daring, that he is not afraid to play or ask for the ball. Of course, he is a Ramírez. Last year he made his debut with Patriotas de Boyacá, but it did not last long, he did not play there again and left, now he is waiting for a second chance elsewhere. He lives in Bogotá with his mother, with his younger sister and with his grandmother, surrounded by friends who help him cope with the emptiness. He has longings, to reach Millonarios, where his father wasted talent, he wants to go to the Colombian National Team, he wants to go play abroad, he wants, above all, to praise everything that his father did. “He was a genius, a crack as a player and as a person, a unique player, he said it all with character, with personality, he was daring, a forward, that was Jhon,” says Mateo, and his voice lights up with pride .
Mateo also remembers his childhood, accompanying Jhon Mario to El Campín, being dazzled by his father’s words in the dressing room, going out on the field and listening to those choirs to the rhythm of “Jhon Mario, Jhon Mario…”, and then chest out, with bristling skin. All of this is part of the past that now returns from time to time in the form of a memory. Especially today, when Mateo and his family miss him even more.
Jhon Mario’s son thanks the fans
Mateo is grateful to those fans who do not forget his father, those who hang flags with his face so that his soul remains present. The fans remember the idol when there is football. Mateo remembers a father every day. “He taught us to worry about others, more than himself, to help people without expecting anything in return, to worry about God, about family, about what you are passionate about, about what you love. He taught us not to stop trying. Today I am grateful to those who remember my dad, even if it hurts, it is nice to remember John Mario Ramírez. And it is difficult to forget Jhon Mario Ramírez”, says Mateo.
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Mateo used to think that people left, when they left completely, and the dialogues ended. But he has been convinced otherwise for a year. Every day he talks to his father, it has become a habit, a way of trying to understand what has no answer.
– And what do you ask him?
-Why has he left?
Paul Romero
Editor of THE TIME
@PabloRomeroET
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