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Kobe Was an All-Star and His Game Gave My Family the Language We Needed
For one Korean American writer, the late athlete bridged generational and cultural divides
This year I will turn 50. When the topic comes up, my mother shakes her head in disbelief. I shake my own head, too. If I’m 50 that makes my brother 54, my dad 82, and my mom 79. Both in the final chapters of their lives.
Today is January 27, 2020. It would normally be an insignificant weekday. I am nearly 2,500 miles away from them, my parents and brother. It is gray and 30 degrees outside, the usual shitty weather that Pittsburgh graces us with every other day. This year I will turn 50 and I am crying watching Ice Cube on ESPN, his voice cracking, talking about Kobe Bryant.
I am waiting for my mom to call me from L.A. to check in on me, to ask me how I am, to sigh as she does when she’s trying to find words that I will understand — she tells me to go to church. Just as she did on November 11, 1991, when I was a student at UC Irvine, when Magic Johnson announced that he was HIV-positive. She called me as I was crawling back into bed in my dorm to ask, “Are you okay?”
I am almost 50 and I’m still waiting to tell my mom that I am lost, that I am afraid of the days that keep disappearing behind me. I am waiting for her to tell me about the game we watched together, me and Judy and Cheol and Robert and Mom, Kobe’s 81-point game, and how that day will never disappear. I am waiting for her to tell me about how the other days too, Game 7 against the Blazers in 2000 when Kobe flies in off his man to swat away Bonzi’s turnaround; she was too stressed by the end and had to leave the room and ended up missing “The Lob.” His legendary 60-point final game? We’ve never talked about it because we were too afraid to talk about the end.
I am waiting to know that my parents and I could still talk to each other, to find a language we can still communicate through, now that we’re no longer together under one roof in Koreatown. I’m in Pittsburgh; they’re living in a subsidized apartment for seniors in Little Tokyo. My parents could never speak to me about the miscarriage Judy and I had — they don’t know how. Neither do I.
Now that he’s gone…
