New Zealand and the rugby world is mourning the loss of Jonah Lomu. Greg Bruce pays tribute to the rugby legend, but reminds us of his most important role: Dad to two little boys.
What knowledge and memories we have of him have been steadily compressed: from a full life to a rugby career, to two World Cups, one World Cup, one match, one try and, finally, one moment: Mike Catt, lost in the endless churn of those unfeasible quads; Keith Quinn, lost among the froth of his notes in the commentary box.
Jonah: enormity of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, freak of nature, player of a type we had never seen before, wading through the dispersed limbs of that most hapless of English fullbacks.
Watching it again, as I have so many times this week, it's hard to tell if he knew the enormity of what he had done in that moment.
He got up after scoring the try - probably the most-celebrated try in rugby history - and he didn't even celebrate it.
He shook a couple of hands and ran back to halfway.
He had done the same type of thing for so long through school and age-grade rugby, dominating everyone he played. Maybe it just seemed normal.
A friend recalls playing for Westlake Boys High School against Jonah's Wesley team in the semifinal of an under-15 tournament in 1990. "We knew he was going to be an All Black," he said. "We talked of him for three years at school."
Wesley's plan in that semifinal, he said, was to play for lineouts, then throw the ball straight to Jonah: "Our forward pack would get on his back and he would cart us up for as long as he could carry us all. Then they would score."
There was much talk in Jonah's early career that he shouldn't be an All Black because he lacked basic skills.
After he had played his first two test matches against France in 1994 and the All Blacks lost both, it had seemed unlikely he would even make the squad for the 1995 World Cup.
His defence wasn't great, his positioning was sometimes off, he could be slow to turn and chase kicks, he wasn't safe under the high ball, he was unfit.
We wanted him to expand from the raw, crushing power and pace that had defined his junior years into the full skillset of a classic international winger - some crap like that.
In the end, it was only because of an injury to Eric Rush that he was selected, after scoring five tries in the 1995 All Blacks trial.
By this time, he was almost certainly suffering ill effects from the kidney disorder that would prematurely end his career seven years later. No matter.
By the final whistle in the final game of the subsequent World Cup, at which he was named best player, as if that were a judgment that needed to be said out loud, the performance that would forever define him in the global consciousness was already behind him. He was 20 years old.
It was an incredible time to watch rugby. In homes all over New Zealand, but particularly in the one in which I watched the 1995 World Cup, there was no phrase more yelled than, "Give it to Jonah."
The All Blacks sought that at every opportunity. It was less a game plan than a fait accompli. It seemed like he was going to score every time he got the ball.
Earlier this week, after hearing of Jonah's death, I ran through the 1995 All Blacks backline in my head. Every one of those players is now a legend, an all-time great.
In any other team, or at any other time, getting the ball to Andrew Mehrtens, Walter Little, Frank Bunce, Jeff Wilson or Glen Osborne would all be sensible options, potential game-winning acts.
But nobody in New Zealand wanted any of that to happen during that year's horrific final. We all screamed the same name at the TV, as we would continue to do for too-few years to come.
You could almost hear it across the dark early-morning streets as the food-poisoned All Blacks chugged, vomit-speckled and weakened, to their extra time defeat.
The primary purpose of those champion All Black backs throughout the 1995 tournament was to act as objects to be passed by as quickly as possible in the race to get it to the left wing. They were ballast.
The 1995 World Cup will always be known as Jonah's tournament, but the fact is that at the 1999 World Cup, he was even better.
Teams knew who he was, and had formulated game plans to defend him. His kidney disorder was public knowledge and was really beginning to bite.
He didn't know it but he had only three years left in his All Blacks career. And still he produced performances of unimaginable fury.
With the scores level in the second half of the pool game against England, he scored a try from 60 metres out which was inarguably better than any of the four he scored against the same team in 1995.
The 1995 World Cup will always be known as Jonah's tournament. Photo / Getty Images
Against France in the semifinal, he scored two that were arguably better again, including one where he beat 10 players and crossed the line with half the French team either on him or clustered haplessly around, trying to grab him.
If the rest of his team was half as effective in 1999 as it had been in 1995, he could have scored more, maybe many more. Instead, they fell apart in the second half of that semifinal and were thrashed, and although nobody knew it then, Jonah would never get another shot at a World Cup.
Sport is, in large part, about dealing with disaster, but there's a special pain in seeing somebody so obviously destined for success not achieve it.
It's like going to The Karate Kid and watching the eponymous hero lose the semifinal to a crappy kid from France who, for much of their match, doesn't even seem to know what karate is.
In 2002, Jonah played his last game for the All Blacks. He was 27.
In 2002, Jonah played his last game for the All Blacks. He was 27. Photo / Paul Estcourt.
That's incredibly young to leave behind the thing that has defined and shaped your life, by which you have already achieved something so great that nobody expects you will surpass it.
But by what measure do we decide great achievements? As our memories of him were steadily narrowing to their inevitable Catt-centric end point, Jonah's life was opening out.
As many of us learned for the first time on hearing the terrible news this week, he was a father to two boys, aged 5 and 6.
Nadene, Brayley, Jonah and Dhyreille. Photo / Unicef
Although we might always remember him as the greatest of all wings, those two boys won't. The fact they probably won't remember much about him at all is a thing almost too sad to imagine.
There is no challenge greater than parenthood, and there is nothing more important. It might be hard to understand or appreciate that when you're a young man, changing the face of rugby, but not when it happens.
We will probably never know how Jonah celebrated the birth of his first son, but I bet he didn't just stoically shake the doctor's hand and metaphorically run back to halfway.
Our jobs don't define us, even when we're better at them than anybody who's done them before and, most likely, anyone who will ever do them again. Jonah was a rugby player first, but finally and foremost he was a father.
