Ode to Kobe Bryant
By KCY
I didn’t know Kobe Bryant. Most of you, out there, didn’t know him either. He wasn’t my brother. He wasn’t a friend. He wasn’t even a classmate.
I saw him two times in real life. When I say real life, I mean my real life, because let’s face it, to most of us “normal folks,” we are mere mortals and people like Kobe Bryant are giant celebrities living in an alternate universe. So, in real life, I saw him twice. Once when I was lucky enough to be six rows up from court side a Lakers game. I was so close, I could see the sweat glistening off the players bodies. I remember the look of intensity on his face, the droplets of his own sweat on his forehead. You could tell he loved basketball. The second time I saw him, was at the Hollywood Bowl at a John Williams concert when he narrated his basketball short for which he won a 2018 Oscar. His deep voice quieted the crowd. We were all enthralled with his voice and his letter to his love, basketball.
So, I didn’t know him, but when I heard the news of his death, my heart couldn’t help but break a little, my eyes couldn’t help but water up and a few tears even ran down my cheeks.
By now, you’ve probably seen the many social media posts from athletes, actors, singers, models, television personalities mourning his death. Some are justifiable like Shaquille O’Neil who played with him for the LA Lakers for many years, but most are from people who didn’t really know him. Yeah, maybe they met him at an event, had a casual conversation with him, but they didn’t have a relationship with him. So, why are they sad, too? Why are we all so sad?
It was sudden and unexpected. A good analogy is the difference between small ocean waves crashing at our feet and a humongous wave knocking us off our feet. We can prepare for small waves which become bigger at our feet. Perhaps we step back further from the shoreline, we get into the water and under the waves. We may get knocked down a little but we are somewhat prepared and can handle this. This is the opposite of what happens with a sudden enormous wave, one which crashes down and knocks us completely off our feet. We never see it coming. We are shocked. We get hurt and it can be challenging to recover. His sudden death is like a wave which knocked us over. We are affected more.
He was young. Forty-one to be exact. We feel his death more than a seventy-year-old because in our eyes, he still had more to do. More ways left to leave an impact on this earth. He had young daughters, including, sadly, one who died along with him. So, we feel sad. Perhaps you are the same age, maybe ten years older or younger. Nothing makes us face our own mortality more than someone close to our age dying. Could we be next?
We were an audience to his life. We watched his life play out on television, magazines, the internet. See above. We were there for the lows and the highs. We mourned the mistakes he made and celebrated personal moments in his life, like the birth of his daughters. So, we feel like we were a part of his life. We were witnesses. Now we grieve the loss of him.
Some of us just love basketball. This is a simple reason. I don’t watch basketball, but I love to read about sports. I know stats on players you wouldn’t expect me to know. Kobe was simply one of the greatest basketball players ever, so those of us, who love basketball feel his loss deeply.
Death is something we all try to understand but we will never understand. A lot of us are attempting to make sense of his death. We ask why. Why so soon? Why this man? We can keep asking these questions but we won’t get the answers. The lack of answers is unsettling and hits us hard.
Here at Resuscitating You, our hearts go out to the Bryant family, Ara Zobayan’s family, the Altobelli family, Chester family and family of Christina Mauser for their incredible losses. We echo the thousands of fans: RIP Kobe.