If you have a beef with anyone, make every effort to make things right (if it is within your power to do so) before the cold finality of death visits your little sphere.
Sometimes there are so many signs pointing in a particular direction. Even if one doesn’t believe in signage significance, it still gives us cause to pause.
Courtesy: micagallery.org
I am emotionally intense. So when, on Sunday, January 26th, I stepped from a stage at an open mic event after having read several poems and saw on my phone the tragic news about Kobe Bryant, his beloved Gianna, and the seven others who perished in a chopper crash in Southern California, I struggled to keep my composure. I didn’t want to bring down the house with an exclamatory reveal. Had I not been struck numb-mum, that is exactly what would have happened.
In these weeks since I discovered that my then rendered-mute pie hole was the result of shock–the precursor to early-onset grief. The ability to process such a horrific happening requires a Herculean effort.
I won’t lie. I’ve been haunted ever since. And even after the Lakers returned to the court after a tribute like none other I’ve witnessed, my coming-to-terms progress has been sloppy, ebbing, and flowing as the memorial services continue. LA’s Staples Center will host a public tribute come February 24th.
On the morning I visited Lower Merion High School, Kobe Bean Bryant’s alma mater, a hushed pall was palpable among those gathered. All manner of mementos filled the space near the entrance to Bryant Gymnasium.
Courtesy: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
I don’t claim to have any interest in hoops. I can’t do a lay-up. I never watch the game. But none of that matters. The incredulity and resultant outpouring of grief, sorrow, and mourning come from another place entirely–the knowledge that all of us, by dint of our humanity, have more in common than not.
I believe that we (as well as our loved ones) are a memento-mori step away from fate’s plucking (moreover, we know it) and that the ultimate lesson (at least for me) hovering over this gone-in-an-instant tragedy is that life is for the living. Hence there’s the omnipresent advisement to hold closer those who are dear to us, frequently express words and actions that convey our deepest feelings toward them.
If you have a beef with anyone, make every effort to make things right (if it is within your power to do so) before the cold finality of death visits your little sphere.
My beloved Father died on February 7th, 2019. As I struck a match to light the candle in honor of his memory, I realized that the connection that so many feel toward Kobe transcends the sport of basketball.
Collectively (and as we watch so many on the world’s court attempt to forge and construct a brave, new Mamba-out existence), we are forced to contend with the notion that the seemingly invincible–those upon whom we confer legend status, the ones who in our minds exist in some untouchable bubble, a rarefied place of entitlement–have no more control over their final breath than do we do our own.
LA continues to prove too much for The Man.
It’s a beautiful thing to witness the outpouring of emotion and love from so many vastly different individuals, who have been struggling to understand why they, like me, are maybe a bit more affected than expected by this massive loss.
Knowing, really knowing, that whether it’s Kobe and Gianna Bryant, the seven other crash victims, you, me, or the errant stink bug in the wrong place at the wrong time, we’ve all “gotta board the midnight train to go.”
We don’t call the shots on that play.
