{"id":44432,"date":"2020-01-26T23:15:21","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T04:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=44432"},"modified":"2020-01-27T22:37:28","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T03:37:28","slug":"rip-kobe-bryant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/rip-kobe-bryant\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP, Kobe Bryant"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the death of my friend Elizabeth Wurtzel<\/a> earlier this month, I spent a lot of time thinking about how complicated people leave complex legacies.<\/p>\n

I returned to that line of thought today, as the country reacted in shock to the death of basketball legend Kobe Bryant<\/a>, 41, in a helicopter crash that killed a total of nine people in California. Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter Gianna<\/a> died with him; they were on the way to her travel basketball game. Bryant is survived by his wife Vanessa and three other daughters: Natalia, Bianka, and seven-month-old Capri.\u00a0The other crash victims identified as of this writing are\u00a0John Altobelli<\/a>, the head baseball coach at Orange Coast College; his wife Keri; and one of their two daughters, Alyssa. The remaining names have yet to be released, but so far at least two families are facing unimaginable grief.<\/p>\n

Of course, when someone is as talented and famous as Kobe was, people far outside the family circle<\/a> feel profound sadness too, including many thousands who never knew him personally<\/a>.\u00a0 Bernice King — who was five years old when her father Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated — wrote on Twitter:<\/p>\n

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Mourning a \u201ccelebrity\u201d does not = lack of \u201cconsciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

And sometimes, the death of someone we feel like we knew, but we never actually touched, triggers pain about the death of people we knew well.<\/p>\n

We are on a brief pilgrimage here, reconciling life and death.<\/p>\n

Love well.<\/p>\n

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) January 26, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n