It was Sunday morning, Dear Beloved was sleeping next to me and i decided i was going to check my Facebook. And the first post i read was the following, from Street Monsters (the FB page of the magazine my brother had created):
Nous avons la tristesse de vous apprendre le décès du fondateur du magazine : Antoine Collignon, alias Artkore. Une chute lors de la Monsters Race d'aujourd'hui, la course qu'il avait créée, nous l'a enlevé à jamais.
Il n'y a pas de mots pour décrire notre douleur. Nos pensées vont en premier lieu à sa famille, et à tous ceux qui comme nous ont eu la chance de côtoyer l'homme qui avait pris le risque de fou de créer ce magazine. RIP Antoine...
I read it about 3 times before i woke up Dear Beloved and make him read that to me, to make sure i was actually reading what i was reading.
Oh, for those of you who don't speak fluent French (shame on you btw), it says the following:
We're sadden to announce the death of the magazine's founder, Antoine, aka Artkore. A fall during today's Monsters Race, the race he had created, took him from us forever. There are no words to describe our pain. Our thoughts are with his family first and then to all of those, like us, who had the chance to hang out with the man who had taken the insane risk to create that mag. RIP Antoine.
My dad was with him at that race and his phone wasn't answering, my mom couldn't get a hold of him either and it was me, 9000+ km away from there, who told mom: your son, my brother, is dead.
As it is so well put in that statement, there are no words that can begin to express the feeling of losing a brother.
Now i had my "reason" for not being in that plane earlier. We were supposed to be at the race. Seeing my brother kill himself would most likely have been traumatizing. The only comfort me and my parents can get out of it is that he died doing what he liked the most, riding a bike, in a race he created, living his dream.
Adieu l'artiste, adieu p'tit frere.
May you ride in peace.
