Kobe Can't Be Gone

Sunday Mass was about to begin. We, the servers, and our priest, were standing in the back waiting for the organ to play and announce our procession. But a couple of folks were mentioning a death, one that had only happened.  I assumed it was a parishioner.  After all in a place which features not only Sunday or Daily Services, there are baptisms and there are funerals. It is an expected wave of ordinary comings and goings of the existential sort.

But just as someone said it was Kobe Bryant, a young and strong and famous man, there was a communal heart drop. And among the prayers, there would be an intention for his too soon gone soul.


I am not even remotely a sports fan. I go to the odd game, more baseball, than anything else.  If I like a game, that is the one I do, and I enjoy the natural or historical surroundings of the various fields. If I have been to a basketball game, it was maybe once, and not likely to watch any team of note. Yet, my heart dropped with the others when I heard the name Kobe Bryant. You'd have to have been living under the proverbial rock not to know who this is, who this was. I knew two things for certain, that he was a profoundly talented player on one professional team for his whole 20 year career, and another that was less a shining thing, courtesy of the very press who will now spend the next many days raising him to the status of demi-god, in just as much a furor as when they sought to topple him in the pre-"believe all women" days.

Not only did my heart drop, but I felt--terrible, like it was a personal loss. How could that possibly be? But even more than that, another feeling, that it could not be possible for him to be gone. I am guessing that a lot of the people, more attached to him than I am, who are gathering near the site of the Calabasas helicopter crash site that took Bryant, and his 13 year old daughter, and seven others, feel that sensibility even more profoundly.  Yes, it surely is about his being accomplished, and, at 41, his beginning a new career in businesses and charities and succeeding in all of these. It might be about what used to be called the "American Dream", the idea that any one of us could, with hard work, and of course, some particular talent, rise to the heights of human achievement.

I speak only for myself on this day of his death, less than 12 hours ago, and perhaps some others can say the same. It is about the truth of things we all know but avoid acknowledging as we move up the ladder of love or success or whatever is our desire as we go through our days. That nothing protects us in this life from its end. And that we must face, even if it is for a moment in time accept that we all can be, and will be gone. I learned something new about Kobe Bryant today that I did not know. He was apparently a Catholic.  One of my fellow servers said that he heard Kobe was a regular church attendee.

If that is so, and his belief was stronger than mine is sometimes, then being gone from here is not a permanent condition and Kobe Bryant's family has not lost him completely, or forever.

Just a few thoughts off the top of my head. Rest in Peace, Mr. Bryant.