Kobe Bryant is dead. His helicopter crashed Sunday morning and nine people lost their lives, amongst them his thirteen-years-old daughter. Kobe was just 41 years old.
I have never been much of a Lakers fan and didn't really celebrated their five NBA Championships in this century. I was happy for Phil Jackson having more rings than fingers and I appreciated the magnitude of the player called Kobe Bryant. When Kobe scored 81 points in a single game, I smiled and thought how useless his teammates were, and how different he was from Michael Jordan. When he retired I thought it was about time for the Lakers to find their new leader, although I was crying from laughter when they signed LeBron James for that role.
Kobe didn't go to college and during the 1996 draft, he was drafted by the Charlotte Hornets as the 13th overall pick. He was just 17 years old then, and declared that he did not want to play for the Hornets. Luckily, but not coincidentally, the Lakers boss Jerry West, had already seen and admired Kobe's potential and wanted him on the team. The negotiations between the Lakers and the Hornets hurt another star of the time, Vlade Divac. The Serbian was a starter in LA and was traded for Kobe to Charlotte. Kobe played 20 NBA seasons for the LA Lakers and retired from basketball after the 2015-2016 season, having reached and broken numerous records and having won 5 Championships.
Just last week, while driving back from practice with a friend of mine, we were discussing Kobe and what a great player he was. Being of an older generation than Kobe, we agreed that Kobe did not do for his team what Michael Jordan did for the Bulls. MJ made his teammates look good, better than they actually were, while Kobe was sure to let everyone know what a great player he was.
Kobe is dead. That fact is definitive and no matter how much we don't want to believe it, it is true and will not change. It was an unexpected piece of news, but the effect it had on me was a surprise. The more I kept reading about it, the more I kept thinking about it, the more I knelt into sadness. There is the eternal but unanswered question: "Why? Why his little girl?" I try to imagine that morning. He kissed his wife goodbye, probably called Gigi not to be late, made e few phone calls on the way to the airport, probably was planning things for after the game. But fate played a different, ugly, unfair game.
I am sure his wife had no idea that kissing her husband and daughter goodbye that morning would be the last time she saw them alive. She probably wished them "Break a leg!", and went on to her morning chores or routine.
Death came so unexpected. Death came so suddenly. I hope Kobe had his affairs in order, but how can he?  He was only 41, and he had his lovely pride and joy with him, his precious girl that he was so proud of. Every day thousands of people around the world take their last breath.  We don't think about them, we don't know them, we are not affected by their loss. Every once in a while, we hear that someone we know or one of our relatives has passed away, and then we become sad. Because we know them, and because we know the affect they had on people, and what they left behind. This Sunday, I read that a great, retired, but not-my-favourite basketball player was killed. Later on, I started to get to know Kobe. I met his family and his lost young daughter. I met Kobe as a father who loved his family. I met Kobe as a young boy growing up in Italy following the footsteps of his father. I met Kobe the artist who wrote poetry and won an Oscar. I met Kobe the true boy that lived inside him and loved the game with all his being. The more I met Kobe, the more I was overcoming with sadness, with tears, with anger for his loss. Â
His death was equally tragic before I met him, I just couldn't relate to his life and the void he left behind. Our people fill our lives and when we lose them, we are left with that void, and we stare at it not knowing what to do with it. Embrace it? Accept it? Ignore it? Live with it? We make room in our hearts for our people to have space in our lives, he let them leave pieces of their lives with us, allowing them to touch our souls and our heart and our minds. And when the people are gone, their piece leave as well and we are left with holes in our hearts, gaps in our minds, and cracks in our soul.
I don't have words of wisdom or philosophical theories that answer these questions. It has been almost two years since I lost my mother and the void as still here. Every day. Many times a day. The void is present, I am just trying to build bridges to walk on it, or try to put frames around it so I can display it, or put tape on the cracks so they don't break altogether. We are all people. Mortals that will leave this world one day, one day that we will not be expecting. I don't know how it will feel, and unfortunately will not be here to see how my life affected others. For the time being I am grateful that I am here and I can help my family grow and grow up. I hope I am touching them with my simple life. I know that when I die, I will not be part of the news like Kobe was, but I know my family will hurt just like his. I know that the void in my family's lives will be just as big as his family's, and in that small moment in the vastness of time, Kobe, we will be the same.
Dear Kobe, this is what I learnt from your death and you should be proud of that as much as everything else you have done in your life. I know that I will try to stay proud about mine, too, and I will not wait for death to introduce me to people.  Â
Dear Kobe, Thank you for everything you have done. You can rest in peace. Â