St. Margaret of Scotland Catholic Grade School perched on the side of a hill like a tam o shanter tilted on the head of a Scotsman on Dravis Avenue in Seattle, Washington.

Mrs. Sullivan’s classroom.

Third grade.

That’s where I was on November 22, 1963 when my middle sister Katie, who was a seventh grader, surprisingly came in to our classroom with a note for our teacher from the principal. Already prone to palsy, Mrs. Sullivan began to shake like a life-size bobble-head doll, letting out a squealed gasp that caught our attention. Her eyes filled up with tears and her shaky voice kept time with her shaky head as she announced that John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President of the United States, had been shot and killed. And the room was reduced to nervous chatter, tears, mini-pandemonium.

That’s how yesterday, January 26, 2020 will be remembered by so many Los Angelenos, southern Californians, Los Angeles Laker fans, and other basketball diehards around the country and world. They will remember where they were when news spread—like the brush fire the crash caused—that retired Los Angeles Laker’s star Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash some 30 miles northeast of Los Angeles. It would be hours later when it was also disclosed that his second daughter of four, Gianna, was with him and also died in the accident. This only seemed to make a tragic story even sadder as did the forthcoming information, stories, and particular life circumstances of the other seven deceased passengers and their surviving children, spouses, and loved ones.

Within minutes of the original announcement from ABC news, the story was picked up by all the national and local TV stations. The final round of the Torrey Pines PGA Tournament was preempted despite the fact that Tiger Woods, a superstar athlete of comparable talent and tenacity to Bryant, was still in the running. Aerial shots of the still-smoldering crash site were soon interspersed with aerial shots of downtown Los Angeles, the Staple Center where the Lakers play, and ground-level reports and filmed interviews of people gathering outside the gated community in Newport Beach where Bryant’s family lived, as well as outside Bryant’s Mamba Sport’s Academy where he was en route to coach his thirteen-year-old daughter’s basketball team in a weekend tournament. Later that evening one hour-long nightly news program chucked their plans to dissect the Presidential impeachment trial and instead devoted the first thirty minutes to covering Bryant’s death, life, accomplishments, humiliations, accolades, mistakes, and future legacy. Like us, he was not perfect. He was no President, no statesman, but multitudes from this generation will remember for decades where they were when they first heard that Kobe Bryant had died just as so many from my generation have remembered JFK’s death.

A former basketball player myself, I no longer follow the game as I once did. I appreciate and enjoy the college game much more than the pros. When I did watch the NBA, Bryant would not have been among the list of my favorite players, though it was hard not to be an admirer of his talent, unmatched work ethic, drive for excellence, and interest in and knowledge of the game.

But for others, especially in the greater LA area where I live, the day would accentuate how many people were deeply attached to this man. I have no empirical evidence, but it appeared to me that Bryant’s most loyal fan base was largely comprised of a multi-cultural cross-section of hard working blue collar folks for whom the price of two Laker tickets and refreshments was no small purchase. Everywhere I went, I heard strangers talking to one another about Kobe Bryant and how shocked and upset they were about his death. In person and via TV and radio news, I heard the word “stunned” repeatedly. Grown men and women, not merely youngsters, basketball players, or even basketball fans, were visibly shaken in interviews. Many wept. Many. Families got in their cars and drove hours to get as close to the helicopter crash site as possible, not because they were prurient looky-loos, but because they wanted to verify for themselves what they had heard, what they could not seem to grasp, what they refused to believe, what they hoped against hope was untrue, a sick joke spread on the internet. Fake news. But it wasn’t fake. It wasn’t an unsubstantiated rumor traced to some insensitive prankster trying to get their kicks.

The television, radio, and internet are saturated today, the day after, with programs devoted to Bryant’s life and death. Updates, reactions, testimonials, personal anecdotes of friendly encounters with Kobe from neighbors at grocery stores or Starbucks or 7 am Mass, shared selfies showing the phone-holder standing smiling with the superstar, touching accounts by sons and daughters bonding with their dads over ten, fifteen, twenty years of watching together Bryant’s creativity, power, and grace, continue to pour in. It was surprising to me how many fans who were interviewed used words and phrases like hero, surrogate father, teacher, mentor, I grew up with Kobe, he was LA, he was so much more than just a basketball player, I wanted to be like him, I copied how hard he worked at my job, his attention to detail and striving for excellence to describe his impact on them. I will leave these affirming stories as well as those critical, less flattering, less hagiographic ones and other reports to those more qualified to give them and to persons closer to the scene of the accident or to the deceased man himself. My focus here is not so much the life and times of Kobe Bryant as it is the reaction to his death by those for whom he was singularly important and an inspiring figure.

There are just a few words from where I sit, that I’d like to offer. They are nothing profound or exhaustive, but just representative of the many places my mind and heart have gone upon seeing how Kobe Bryant’s death has effected so many people. Perhaps my thoughts will dovetail with some of yours and be worth pondering.

It is telling, I think, upon hearing the news of Bryant’s death, no matter the source—spouse, family member, best friend, television or radio report—how many people simply could not take it in, could not believe it to be true, could not fathom that Kobe Bryant—KOBE BRYANT—was dead. The response was more than the all-too-familiar WHAT?! that often leaps out of our mouths upon first receiving words that we heard but could not comprehend. Whether witnessed live or heard in interviews, the immediate reactions of resistance—NO WAY or THAT CAN’T BE TRUE or KOBE’S NOT DEAD or THAT’S A TERRIBLE THING TO SAY or THAT’S A HORRIBLE RUMOR or I DON’T BELIEVE IT or THAT’S A LIE or WHERE D’YA HEAR THAT? TMZ?—were so prevalent, almost unanimous first responses, that it was surprising when it was not the immediate reaction from someone interviewed or from friends, acquaintances, and fans who weighed in on Facebook or Twitter. The collective but personal litany of responses was more than shock. Shock is to be expected whenever we hear someone who is well and thriving one day is said to be dead the next. It was the unconscious sliding from the understandable “I can’t believe this” to the more pronounced and adamant refusal to believe it at all that was so noticeable to me. Such news is not infrequently so offensive to some people’s ears that bearers of such bad news have been known to have their chests pummeled by the recipients of this news.

In a time and culture that especially relishes the superstars it creates, pedestalizes, and reveres, and that promotes an inordinate amount of entertainment that focuses on superheroes doing superhuman things, it is not altogether surprising that the predominant counteraction to word of Kobe Bryant’s death—set between the immediate reaction of shock and the later response of sadness and grief—is the protracted refusal to believe it to be so. Superheroes don’t die, they have sequels. One well-known Los Angeles sportscaster and friend of Kobe Bryant said simply, THAT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. What is revealed in the raw, unscripted reaction of so many, is the hidden belief or secret wish that such an event is not possible, let alone true. It exposes an underlying anxiety and fear. If our superheroes who hold our secret hopes and dreams and through whom we often live and move vicariously through life are not immune to the tragic and transitory nature of reality, then we must be even more vulnerable ourselves. To have that unconsciously tucked away, out-of-sight-and-mind reality so suddenly unveiled and shoved in your face, is very upsetting. Along with the genuine feeling of affection, respect, adoration, and gratefulness toward Kobe Bryant, I suspect the unconscious belief that superheroes are immune to tragedy or death goes a long way toward accounting for the intensity and depth of feeling and the personal way in which people experienced this disorienting news and terrible loss.

There is a wisdom, a knowing deeper than cognition that arises from deep within us when confronted with such catastrophes and the anguish they unleash. These events not only tend to awaken us to contradictory mysteries, but also to a seemingly improbable matrimony when the two are joined.

The two Mysteries are, on the one hand, an experience that opens us up to the sheer gratuitousness of life, to the realization that a particular happening or all of life is gift, from the smallest breath to the exquisite majesty of a snow moon in February. Some of the various responses to this Mystery are awe, gratefulness, praise, bliss, a sense of communion or the interconnectedness of all life, and a sense of deep peace. We might call this Mystery grace. On the other hand, is the Mystery that awakens us to the reality that while life is pure gift, it is not guaranteed. These experiences or events threaten our imagined security, expose the fragility of our lives and loves, reveal the precarity of our hopes and faith. This is the Mystery that has arisen, for many, as a result of the shocking news of Kobe Bryant’s death.

Catholic theologian John Shea does as good a job as can be done to describe this indescribable experience. He writes:

Another path to Mystery is collapse. When order crumbles, Mystery rises. When our most prized assumptions about life are suddenly ripped from us, Mystery appears as a fury which threatens to engulf us. No protective symbols are available, no interpretive culture buffers its impact on the human soul. Its appearance is frightening; its name is the abyss.1

There is good reason why so many soon after a tragedy like this will say virtually the same thing when a microphone and camera are put in front of them: “When you get home tonight,” the person says to us watching on television, “be sure to give your children or loved one an extra long hug.” They say this or similar words because the near occasion of death has roused them from their slumber, awakened them (and, of course them is us) to what and whom we take for granted. This is the common occurrence, the almost certain and predictable counsel given by those who either have been shattered by some event or experienced a near miss. Either case—a direct hit or a near miss—reveals the tenuousness of life which, ironically but hopefully, will awaken us to the gratuitousness of each breath, hour, and day, and hopefully will evoke deep sympathy and compassion from us for those who lost their lives, and for their love ones who have unexpectedly been forced to look into “this chaotic face of Mystery”2 named the abyss.

And so we pray: One day, may the Mystery of grace swallow up the Mystery of the abyss. One day, may the grief of the family and friends of those who tragically died, and all those who grieve their passing, be overshadowed by their gratefulness for life and living. And one day, may joy be a truer truth than sadness. Until then, our broken hearts go out to them. Amen.

1 John Shea, Stories of God: An Unauthorized Biography, p. 29.

2 Ibid.