Kobe’s Memorial Was the Last Time We Grieved in Public, and We Never Stopped
Mourning broke through our self-constructed dams and made us vulnerable. We still haven’t gone back to inspect the damage.
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Even a year after Kobe Bryant’s death, his memorial service at the Staples Center still feels like something ripped from our darkest dreams. Some of our most visible sports heroes emoted in ways we hadn’t really seen before or even imagined possible. There was Shaq, the hulking Superman who had torn down rims and plowed through grown men, weeping over both his former teammate and his sister, whom he’d lost to cancer months prior. We saw Michael Jordan, a man we’d only seen cry when winning championships or lamenting that he couldn’t rip out people’s hearts on the court anymore, sobbing. They were only two of the brotherhood mourning that day, coming to grips with the fact that a freak helicopter crash had killed a generational star, his daughter, and their friends — a community of Black men showing more sadness than we usually allow ourselves to express.
It should have been a defining moment of 2020. Instead, it became a harbinger.
