The phrase that has come to mind so many times since Shane Warne's passing — and was raised so many times during his state memorial on Wednesday at the MCG — was 'larger than life'.
Warne could feel that way sometimes. On the final day of a Test match, say, or in one of those spells where the ball was whizzing around and he was turning the thing all over the joint when he seemed more than a bloke sending down deliveries and more like a cricketing god.
However, before Warne was a cricketer he was a man and Shane Warne the man was farewelled by the people who knew him best at a private ceremony 10 days ago. The details of that ceremony are private, as they should remain, because no matter how many overs we may have watched, almost none of us knew Shane Warne as a man.
We got a sense of it when his children — Jackson, Brooke and Summer — spoke to end the state memorial.
Each of them take after him so much, and they spoke so emotionally — not of Shane Warne the cricketer, the hero we all knew so well, but of their father, who they'll miss forever — that cricket stopped mattering for a while.
We didn't know Warne as a brother, a son, a father, a husband or a friend. He was those things before and after we knew him as a cricketer, but a cricketer was how we knew him. The Warne family said they wanted this to be a celebration of Warne's life, and cricket was such a great part of his life.
So it made sense that the national anthem was sung by Greta Bradman, giving the day a link to the other titan of Australian cricket, Sir Donald Bradman, her grandfather.
It made sense that the fans in the stands were encouraged to wear their cricket gear, because Warne was never one to stand on ceremony. He liked the things he liked, and he liked them how he liked them, and the rest of it didn't matter.
In one of the highlights of the ceremony, a letter his sibling, Jason Warne, wrote to his older brother from 1992 was read aloud. In it, Jason told his brother how proud he was, and urged Shane to make the most of the chance he had as a top-level cricketer
That's exactly what Warne did. He made things work for him.
That's why it made sense that Allan Border, Mark Taylor, Merv Hughes, Nasser Hussein and Brian Lara were rolled out on a TV commentary-style panel. Their emotion was genuine, their stories were long and rambling and heartfelt, and to feel the full effect you probably just had to be there.
It was reminiscent of Warne's own stints in the commentary box, the point where, if one of them had started recounting the plot of a movie they watched the night before or ranking their favourite types of pizzas, it wouldn't have been much of a surprise.
There was a second panel, where they talked about golf stories and TV shows and all the other things that made up his tastes beyond the cricket pitch, and there were musical tributes where Elton John, Jon Stevens, Chris Martin, Robbie Williams and Ed Sheeran, via video, each played some of Warnie's favourite songs.
None of it was perfect but, like Warne himself, that wasn't so important as not pretending to be perfect.
Only those who knew him best can speak for Warne and what he would have liked his public memorial to be but, at it's core, this was a bunch of people coming together to say how much they loved him and tell stories about things they did together with his children and their relationship with their father at the forefront.
That very much seems like Warne's type of night.
All the great moments which have been recalled since Warne's passing three weeks ago were rolled out and remembered again. They are known so well it's almost like they're taught in schools — the ball of the century, the 2005 Ashes, the hat-trick at the MCG, the 700th Test wicket and everything else.
Bringing them up and focusing on all the different little details still hasn't gotten old. It's doubtful they ever will. For as long as cricket is played, we'll tell those stories.
But what people remember more than what somebody did is how that person made them feel. Every single fan in the stands at the MCG and every single person watching across the four networks would have had their own Warne story.
Maybe it was the drift of a certain delivery they watched on TV that everyone else forgot, or maybe they ran into him at a pub one time and brought him a Crown Lager, or maybe they saw him at a cricket clinic or down at the nets one day and he dropped some pearl of wisdom on leg-spinning that made them feel like they could do it, they could bowl just like Warnie.
So Warne's father, Keith, the first of the family to speak, recalled a Shane Warne that none of us knew but yet felt so familiar, the Warne who could touch somebody's life in a way they would never forget, it rang true.
"He could always find a way to make someone's day just a little bit better, even in the darkest of times," Keith said of his boy.
"We are grateful the world loved our son as we did."
The final moment of the night was the unveiling of the Shane Warne Stand, ensuring Warne, who was already a part of the MCG history, was now part of the ground forever. They'll never rename the Warnie Stand. The punters would take to the streets if they ever dared try.
Every time someone comes through the gates for the footy or the cricket, they'll see the Warnie stand, even as the emotion of this night will eventually fade. Time will pass and the wounds will heal.
But the outpouring of affection and love for Shane Warne, Australia's superhero, will never dim. As a man, he'll be missed every day. As a cricketer, he belongs to the ages now.
