Brainstorm

I’ll never forget the day Kobe Bryant died. I’ll never forget where I was. I’ll never forget how I felt. I was score keeping at a badminton tournament and I got a text that read “Kobe is dead.” The night before, LeBron James had just surpassed Kobe on the all-time list of most points scored by an NBA player. I thought the text meant that Kobe was dead in the sense that he was no longer part of the GOAT (greatest of all time) debate so I thought nothing of it. I then started getting notifications from twitter of celebrities saying “oh god please don’t let this rumour be true.” Seconds later I came across a TMZ article saying that Kobe had died in a helicopter crash. I didn’t believe it, but deep down I felt like something was off. I’ve never seen news spread on social media as fast as that article spread that day. Everyone’s fears became a reality when Adrian Wojnarowski, senior reporter for ESPN and NBA insider confirmed that Kobe Bryant, along with his daughter Gianna had passed way in a tragic helicopter accident. For the following week, I felt like something was missing in my life, but I couldn’t understand why. I’ve always been a Kobe fan, but I never knew him personally. He retired from the NBA in 2016, so he isn’t playing anymore, which is why I couldn’t quite figure out why I felt like his death left a gaping hole. For the following days I didn’t feel like talking to anyone about it because it genuinely hurt to think about. Then when somebody brought it up and I tried to shut down the conversation, I was asked “why do you care so much, it’s not like you knew him.” So I wondered. Why did I care? It didn’t make sense to me that I was so sad about the death of one of my favourite basketball players that I had never even met. I am not a person that is very in touch with my emotions. I don’t really feel sad about many things. I have yet to truly experience the death of a loved one so I had nothing to compare what I was feeling to. I then began to question whether or not it made sense for me to feel so terrible.