I have been so saddened by the sudden death of Kobe Bryant and his beautiful 13 year old daughter. I’m not one who loves basketball or could say that Kobe Bryant meant something to me but what I can say is I’m a mother and anytime I hear of someone losing a child, there is so much sadness that overcomes me.
I have a friend who I met when we were first pregnant with our boys. We met at a hypnobirthing class and ended up having our boys a few weeks apart. We became friends and so did our boys and about a year later, she became pregnant again. On her 39th week routine checkup, she received the news that every pregnant women dreads. Her baby boy no longer had a heartbeat and she had to give birth immediately.
They had a funeral for him that we couldn’t go to and I got together with her a few weeks later. I felt myself feeling so anxious, like what do you even say, what could I possibly say that could be comforting. I let her talk about it and I told her how I couldn’t begin to imagine what she was going through. Then she turned to me and said something I will never forget, she said, “but you do understand because you’re a mom”.
And that’s the thing because in a way I did understand. When you’re a mom, you join many relatable clubs, the I’m tired club, the I pee when I jump on a trampoline club, the I’m going to lose my mind if someone asks me for one more thing club, the I just wish I could go to the bathroom by myself club but the most universal club is the one where we all understand exactly what motherhood is. We understand that our hearts travel outside our chests, how even though these little humans drive us crazy, they are part of us, they our part of our souls. So when someone loses part of that soul, you can only be a mother to truly understand the unimaginable.
So when I found out about Kobe Bryant, I felt sad because he was so young to lose his life but when I found out his daughter passed away as well, that unimaginable feeling came seeping in. I couldn’t help but think of his poor wife, how not only her husband passed away but her child is something different. It is part of her soul, her being and I know every mother felt her pain because that’s what you do when you’re a mother. You have this love and empathy that is greater than anything you have ever felt so when another person in that club loses that love, even if it is a stranger, your heart breaks for them.
