2.9.2020
Dear Kobe,
What do you do when your grief lasts longer than a news cycle? I’m seriously asking, because it’s been two weeks since you left, and I still cry every time I hear your name or think about you and Gianna, and everyone on that helicopter. I think about your family, about their families, and about how none of us will ever really recover from this. If I didn’t even know you personally and I feel like this— I don’t even want to imagine what the people who do know you personally are feeling.
Earlier last week I read that you were really close to clearing the fog, and as soon as I heard it, I started sobbing in my car. You were all so close. THIS CLOSE. And now, you’re definitely above the clouds, but in a different way. You’re with the constellations now, with the superior Ambika (my namesake), with a few of my deeply missed friends, and with all the other idols I never got to meet. I’m sorry, this isn’t about me at all— and I keep saying “I”— and I’m so sorry because I really don’t know how else to convey to you how much you are missed. Just like them, you’re in my thoughts every single day now. Just like them, you’re never really gone.
I grew up recognizing you as one of the best basketball players of my generation. But you were more than that. You knew that. And you were also more than the perfect person you seemed to be. But you knew that too. And you acknowledged what that meant, and unlike any other athlete I’ve heard of— you 180’d and became a megaphone for women’s rights. Sorry, I feel like I had to bring that up— a few people saw the title “feminist” in my bio, and thought I was a traitor for ever being inspired by you. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t conflicted during parts of your career— but I don’t owe anyone an explanation for how, when, or why I am still so affected by you.
Anyways, I just wanted to say thank you again, for existing. I walked by your memorial at the Staples Center the other day with Sahara, and I could feel how much you meant to everyone there. I read through the letters everyone sent me for your tribute, and I can feel the love through their words to you too. This makes you still alive to me— if anything, in spirit. You left an essence of inspiration in the lives of everyone who saw you the same way I did. And I’m thankful to even have gotten a glimpse of what that kind of effect could be like. You’re a legend, man. No one will ever be able to take that away from you.
Maybe two weeks from now won’t feel as shitty as two weeks from then does. Maybe, I don’t know. I’ve grieved before— but differently every time, and I mean usually I’ll go out and build something to channel the pain, but this pain feels different. I don’t know how to describe it, other than lingering, and sad. I know it’s not the Mamba Mentality to be sitting on something like this for so long, but I wonder what you’d say to everyone feeling the same way I do.
In Hinduism, the soul goes through a journey to inevitably reach Moksha (one with the universe). I know you’re Catholic and y’all have a different way of outlining things— but since no one really knows who’s right about these things, I just wanted to say that I hope in this life, even after everything, that your journey towards Moksha is close. I hope you, your daughter Gianna, the Altobelli’s, Christina Mauser, the Chesters, and Ara Zobayan are at peace. I want to believe that.
I know you can’t read this letter, or any of the others, but them even existing is just another way of us all saying thank you.
Thank you, again, for everything.
Mamba Forever.
Love,
Ambika
