“He understood how loved he was”

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This text is a column with opinions that are the writer’s own and not Nyheter24’s.

Every nation has its standard bearers. It’s not about the sport they play. It’s about something in their personality that resonates in a key that millions of people can’t feel themselves in.

Begin Collection was a hockey player who showed hockey’s homeland how a Swede plays hockey. For that he was deeply loved. I’m old enough to remember the slow laps of honor in the Swedish national team jersey during the 1976 Canada Cup.

He circled ever so slowly as the cheers rolled in from the stands.

The Canadians, excellent interpreters of their national sport, had located something completely unique in Salming. He was one of them by forever being one of us.

Salming was much more than an athlete. He was an ambassador for Sweden in the world. His ravaged body was a map of scars, a war zone, his scars like medals. He fought for his club, his country and his city in every change, every damned little cut on that ice he took for others.

It is an act of love in its most sensual form.

The tribute during the Canada Cup was already in 1976. Recently he got to participate in two more, one in Canada and one in Sweden.

I actually think that we, as awkward humanity, had time to tell Börje Samling what a damn hero he is and remains! I think he understood.

And I think he understood how loved he was.

As much for what he did on the hockey rink as for keeping his humanity intact throughout his life.

I sat next to him at a celebrity thing a number of years ago and he asked a thousand more questions than he answered.

He was genuinely curious.

Towards the end, he waged a devastating war against a diabolical disease. Somehow it feels as if the black, heavy claws of that disease would have liked to lead him right out into the world for a while longer, to expose him sick and incapacitated.

But Salming braved the darkness and was celebrated by all those people in Canada and in Sweden.

Then he cut the ropes of that vulgar and malevolent darkness, and let the clawed shadow leave him like smoke, like dew early in the morning.

Now he is free and ready.

Now he is part of the history he wrote in gold text while he was alive.

He’s still alive.

Every time I think of his heroic struggle to make all that is beautiful about Sweden out into the world, he stands up like a hologram for an inner gaze.

Thank you for all the battles you fought and won, Börje.

Thank you for existing and continuing to exist.

Sweden has a single deck of cards with people who mattered extra.

You wear the crown in that deck.

/Marcus Birro

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