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compliance, built-in confidence. Learn more at vertexinck.com. Hello everybody. This is Taylor. Welcome to

an abbreviated episode of the Total Soccer Show. Just Me Today, which feels appropriate. For those who've listened to the show for a while, you may know that today is the day two years ago that my friend and co-host, Daryl Grove, passed away. We started the show in 2009 together and spent an awful lot of time together between then and when he eventually passed.

He was diagnosed with colon to liver cancer in January of 2019, ultimately passing away in October of 2020.

And I wanted to say something today, but these things don't really get easier. And I tend to

kind of like take notes or try to write something out just to give me a jumping off point. I'm

going to try to do it differently this time. My hope would be that next year I can just be here,

like telling you funny stories and little anecdotes. But I don't know, I feel like for people

who've listened to the show for a long time, people who cared about Daryl or continued to care about Daryl, maybe you'd just like to know where I'm at. And where I'm at is that I really miss him every single day. It's gotten easier in some ways. It stays harder and others. And I thought it was interesting, at least to me, that, like, I saw some friends of ours for

breakfast on Friday, and I realized how often I talk about him in the present tense. And part of that

is probably that I'm still not fully over his loss, and so maybe he's still not past tense

for me, but also because I don't ever want him to be past tense. And I think a lot about him, as I said, and who he was and who he was to me and what he meant to me.

And who he was was a friend, a mentor, a soft critic, a colleague, a reliable confidant, just so many things.

And when you spend, in my mind at least, when you spend that much time with a person,

you talk about the things you talk about, you have the experiences you do,

it's just impossible not to let them in a little bit, hopefully a lot bit, but at least a little bit.

And I think when you let that person in, when they impact

the way you think, the way you act, in a good way, there's a little part of them that I think

is with you, always, and ideally guides your thinking at times and helps be that little voice

on your shoulder in your ear. And that's what I hope Darrell is, and that's what he remains to this day. So I still have moments with my daughter where she's up at 6 a.m. and screaming, and I want to be frustrated, and I'm tired and annoyed. And I just think, like, if he were here right now, he'd put an arm around the shoulder and just be like, you can do it, buddy. He wouldn't do it.

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