It All Made Sense, After All

It's hard to say whether people are crying more because he's gone, or because there won't be another like him, at least not for a long time. The feeling now can be best described by his own words, spoken when the great Duda Ivković passed away: "We are less strong and less great than we were before this." That's how his Partizan is now, and so is Serbian basketball – less strong and less great.

Throughout his 68 years, he seemed to embody an immense amount of love, a unique kind of love for the combination of two colors, a magical game, young people, and life itself. If not for that, he wouldn't be mourned this way; it would be too much just for a coach.

They say that at the final judgment, only one truth is revealed – that the meaning of life was love. His life, it seems in the end, truly had meaning.

And who would have thought that after that rebel, that man with such ideals and convictions, the most talked-about thing would be love? Yet, it is, but a love uniquely his own. Still, it appears everything he did stemmed from and was for love, though it was often presented in a veiled, loud, seemingly strict manner, so much so that it might not have initially resembled love, making it perhaps difficult to discern and understand.

His eyes would sometimes well up, his voice would tremble, but then he'd cut his sentence short. He disliked anyone seeing it; his pride, perhaps, wouldn't allow him to show any vulnerability or weakness. Yet, he was both vulnerable and weak, precisely because of that love, a fact perhaps best illustrated by a scene recounted by Professor Vladimir Koprivica.

His fear was that the time given to him would not be wasted, and everything we've witnessed since the news of his passing tells us that he didn't waste it, and nothing was in vain.

His time was not wasted. Every mark of respect, every quoted sentence, every career-spanning gratitude from players, every tear shed by those who don't cry easily, and the thousands of souls bidding him farewell and accompanying him are proof of that. Proof lies in the lines of people who waited for hours to write a simple "thank you" – for the memories, the passion he instilled, and his fight. It's in a tearful Vanja and the words he speaks about him with the utmost respect. It's in the army that remained behind its general, in the Frenchman whose life he changed, who calls him his second father in Serbian, and who carried his cross at the funeral. It's in Tepić bidding him farewell with poetry, or Bogdan, who after all he's achieved in his career, wonders if he managed to become what Dule believed he would be...

He also spoke of the futility of greatness, yet in his greatness, we see, there was nothing futile.

He leaves behind victories and trophies, young boys with medals around their necks, boys he shaped into men, men with books in their hands, thousands of basketball enthusiasts, and his unique Partizan. And a great void.

He leaves behind stories and people who testify that, after all, it all made sense.

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