When a Legend Passes: On the Death of Kobe
The modern day Morse Code of push notification vibrations was my first clue that something was wrong.
When your phone goes off like that, back-to-back-to-back, with the Washington Post, CNN, and the AP running a digital 3-man weave, it necessitates at least a quick glance.
I shifted my daughter to the opposite knee, balancing her on my leg, seated in the human cupholders of Orlando’s public transit system, and pulled out my phone. We were on a Lynx — a pink bus that had none of the agility nor speed of its feline namesake — heading towards the local international airport.
My wife, son, daughter, and I were en route to our very first Disney vacation when I found out Kobe Bryant was no longer alive.
Unfortunately, in 2020 it’s easy to get terrible news, even when you’re heading to the Happiest of Places™.
I checked and rechecked. Desperately I swiped down on my Twitter feed, hoping that Woj would somehow swoop in and unbomb this whole thing, nearly missing my stop as I made sure there wasn’t some kind of mistake.
This was the kind of macroscopic bad news that somehow hits you right in the microscopic inner workings. The kind where you “knew” someone who died in the 4-fingered, italicized air quotes that all but a select few would have to use. The kind of not-so-secret handshake that said as much as actual American Sign Language when it comes to our shared understanding of one of the all time greats.
See, none of us really knew Kobe. But we all kind of knew him.
Certainly, his friends and family likely had a bead on the man behind the mythos, were privy to the quiet moments of soul-baring that are inevitably shown to the select few — either due to genetics, proximity, or choosing — allowed behind the red velvet ropes that cordon off people whose fame becomes so immense that the public attempts to annex parts of who they are.
While we certainly weren’t in the inner circle, the Venn Diagram of someone with such a life can often expand, like the still-vibrating universe with the edges that scientists tells us are still expanding, to enfold so many.
Kobe Bryant was a kind of benign black hole.
His weight. His gravity. It pulled you in.
I saw it first hand when I traveled to the Staples Center for a surprise anniversary gift from my then-girlfriend-now-wife as a mere observer of Bryant.
I was a fan of the game, an NBA fanatic to be sure, but one with a very healthy skepticism of then-number 24 for the Purple and Gold. Alas, I was too close to his swirling, galactic mass. He hit a buzzer-beater to win the game against the Indiana Pacers and I was immediately converted. Baptized in the river Kobe in front of a congregation of 20,000 as the horn sounded and he pumped his fist like he knew I’d say “Hallelujah” all along.
I saw it that day when I heard of his death, of the death of his daughter and far too many others who were on board the helicopter when it went down; with my own children held close and the dam of tears behind my eyes threatening to break, flooding for a man I had never even spoken to.
He spoke to me, though.
On the court and off. With his polymath intellect as well as his ruthless competitiveness. With the gentle way he held his own children close, his girls the rocket fuel for his still-ascending ship.
Eventually I did what Kobe did. I refocused. I leaned in to my family and let them guide me as I try to guide them.
I hugged my daughter, kissed my son’s forehead, held my wife’s hand. I found solace in the smallness of my own life, even as I watched a grand, somber, rolling wave of grief pass through the sports-mad world that I am so mad about.
He will be eulogized better and more in depth than I am doing today.
But we are, all of us, the Greek chorus to the tragedy of a life cut short.
The other victims of the helicopter crash are gone. Kobe is gone. Gianna is gone. But we are still here.
And that Venn diagram of his, that gravity from the benign wonder of the universe is still inescapable. You’ll feel it tugging at the marrow of your bones.
It’s pulling us all together.
Rest in peace.
