Addendum to Ode to Kobe Bryant

BY KCY

When I sat down to write this post, I fully intended to write something light hearted and fun, yet, here I am still thinking about what happened to Kobe Bryant, his daughter and the other seven passengers on that helicopter. The devastating pictures of the crash scene, the heartfelt messages of support to the victims in this tragedy, the coverage on the news, sports channels, entertainment magazines. I’m finding it hard to watch basketball right now without crying. Almost every person I talk to mentions Kobe Bryant in some part of the conversation. “Yeah, life is short. Look at what happened to Kobe.” “I hugged my kids last night because of Kobe.”

So, while I really truly wanted to write about something fun, something that would make you and me both smile, here I am, writing about Kobe again.

What happened to Kobe is bringing back what happened to my father. My perfectly healthy seventy-year-old father who if not young like Kobe, was equally strong and vibrant and the man who was the center of my universe. His death wasn’t sudden like Kobe’s but it was shocking nonetheless. One day, I was talking to him about what he did that day, the next day, I was talking to his doctor about his terminal brain cancer and what we could do to try to get him to survive six months. The day I heard the news rocked my world and the day he died was the day my world collapsed on top of me.

When I see pictures of Kobe with his arm around his daughter, I see my dad with his arm around me. I see the same love Kobe had for his daughter that my dad had for me, and it crushes me.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way which is why we are all so sad about Kobe. We see the loved ones we have lost, the loved ones we are afraid to lose, the loved ones we are losing right now. We see our dads with their arms around us. We see our arms around our own children.

When my father died, I tried to look for the silver lining in his death. I wanted to feel that life was more precious because that’s what we say when someone dies, but I don’t think I truly felt that way. I just missed my dad. I still miss my dad.

I’m trying again to look for the silver lining, this time in these nine passengers’ deaths, but I honestly, don’t see one because it makes me think about my own pain about losing my dad. But, maybe that’s a start. Maybe confronting the pain is how we can all begin to heal.

I promise I’ll write about something fun next time. Maybe I’ll write about Kobe’s fade away. Maybe I’ll write about the time my dad took me on an adventure in the Arizona desert. But for now, I’m going to attempt to tackle my pain head on.