Kobe, and the Difficult Task of Memory

The scene probably played out similarly: groggy and eyes filled with morning glories, we scramble towards our phones to turn the alarm off, or check unread messages. Then, a confounding headline about tributes appear. Words like “killed” and “crash” start piling up, until some article reveals a name: Kobe Bryant. Refusing to believe – and for some ardent fans, the hopeless hope that it is all a dream – we try to verify and confirm. It is true. Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gigi, and 7 others, were killed in a helicopter crash.

 

That his death tremendously affected people – fans and non-fans alike – was no surprise. Tributes and commemorations began to appear as fast as the news has spread. Personal testimonials about how Kobe was a huge influence in their lives – myself included – became commonplace, and with the current generation’s penchant for memes, paid homage to the shouting of “KOBE!” whenever someone scored a trash can shot from deep. Fond memories of Kobe’s insane 81-point game, or him converting two charity points after rupturing his Achilles tendon, or even the numerous visits he’s had in the Philippines – Kobe’s death triggered an outpouring of grieving and memory.

 

But just as fast-appearing were the more unpalatable aspects of his life – specifically, his 2003 Colorado rape case. I say “case” and not “accusation” since it is documented that Kobe himself penned an admission, and that a separate civil case filed by the victim was settled out of court. An old article by The Daily Beast was immediately met with condemnation and death threats made against Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez, who shared the article a mere hours after Kobe’s death.

 

The extremely negative reaction was no surprise. But what was surprising was how Ms. Sonmez doubled down on her opinions even as she was taken on administrative leave. And it made me think of the peculiar ways we treat the icons of our childhood, the adulation we think they deserve, and the derision we afford to people who do not agree with us. Conversely, it was also a reflection on how we cannot – or will not – accept more than one narrative of a person’s life, an either-or thinking, if you will, when we do the act of commemorating. And it speaks volumes to how we understand memory, death, and even ourselves.

 

We want to be remembered. There is no debate in that. From the simple acts of love to grand visions of legacy, everyone wants to leave their mark. It is part of the human condition. Consequently, human life is too diverse, complicated, and messy to be ever encapsulated in a memory, so we stick to the aspects of our lives that are savory, that merit remembrance. Conversely, we relegate to the river of forgetfulness the parts we are too ashamed of even admitting privately.

 

The death of Kobe should not only cover his achievements, for his dark nights would have formed him for who he was. I am of the opinion that the most proper, fitting, and respectful commemoration of Kobe’s life includes the aspects of his life that he would not be proud of, aspects he probably wouldn’t tell her daughters – aspects that probably expose that his shared life with his family isn’t as seamless as it seems.

 

And that is the catch. Just as Kobe himself would have had trouble dealing with his dark past, I suspect that we have a deep-seated trouble in accommodating conflicting narratives of a person’s life. We cannot comprehend the complexity of a person’s life, probably because we are also confronted with the same issues with our own identities. Maybe we are too afraid to admit we are two-faced, that there is a private internal diversity we are too afraid of confronting.

 

It seems like people get reduced to this “all or nothing” attitude and mindset when trying to commemorate someone. I really wonder where that comes from – perhaps an aversion to the idea that memory can be imperfect? Or the refusal to accommodate different narratives from a single person? In any case, I do think it tells us how in turn we see ourselves – as an all or nothing being, that we want to be remembered for only the good memories, and that we try so hard to destroy the bad ones. All the while forgetting the simple fact of our private internal diversity.

 

Kobe’s death made me realize how unwilling we are in confronting our own complexities, and maybe that’s the lesson that we can learn, that commemoration also entails remembering the transgressions. The imperfection of human existence is precisely what makes it memorable. And we can’t handle that. So we stick to just one narrative: unyielding adulation or unrelenting criticism. Perhaps this dualism also is a consequence of how death signals the end of redemption, without second chances. The end of the story, judgment time. And judgment, at least in our heads, is as simple as guilty or not guilty.

 

But perhaps it is also more than just Kobe’s death. The rabid reactions both for and against Kobe, ultimately, forces us to confront our own eventual death: the proverbial full stop in the story of our lives, when memory takes over our lives in the stories other people tell about us. That we are afraid to be remembered wrongly – this human impulse to sanitize the lives of others is also reflective of our own self-sanitations. We are never too brave to admit it, but we self-sanitize all the time. The story we like to tell ourselves is one that is without blemish. And death does not allow us to revise our narrative anymore. The fear to be remembered wrongly is in reality a fear of our own mortality.

 

The question, then, is: how to properly remember? What does it really mean, to remember justly? Perhaps these are the questions we can ponder on not only in the aftermath of Kobe’s death, but also in our public lives, when we are confronted with the tendency of the elite to obliterate memories of the suffering majority. Perhaps more personally, we can also ask this question privately: how much of myself am I willing to be remembered, and how do I honor my own memory – is it through sanitation, or is it through the tried and true narrative structure of redemption? – for surely, as I think, Kobe tried to redeem himself, and for many, he did.

 

Sharing these thoughts with some friends, however, helped me reach the realization that even my manner of seeing Kobe’s life as a redemption was my way of sanitizing his legacy, especially after you consider the harrowing details of that Colorado rape case. A male-gaze version of the happily ever after, if you will – that even the worst of transgressions can be redeemed. Perhaps I’m taking the privilege of always having second chances for granted, and perhaps this has something to do with my embodiment as a male. That there is a link between our bodies and our ability to remember, and our choices as to what to remember – this is a question that we unfortunately have to confront, a necessary and logical consequence in asking about the ethics of remembering: whose memory, and at the expense of whom?

 

For now, perhaps it would be more fitting to frame Kobe’s story as a story of redemption, but one that is without end, without assurance of salvation, an eternal striving for an impossible possibility: the forgiveness from the victim. Frankly, it is our own respective stories too – of trying to be a better version of ourselves, privately atoning for our sins by being kind to others and doing great things, even when we know how much our own darkness makes us undeserving of any sympathy.