Tuesday, January 28, 2020

The helicopter crash heard round the world...and in my heart

A helicopter went down a couple of days ago on the coast of California. On board, there were nine people. A pilot (Ara Z), a family of three (John, Kerry and Alyssa), a kids basketball coach (Christine), A mom and daughter (Sarah and Payton) and of course a father and daughter who had considerable fame prior to the crash...Kobe and Gianna. 

As part of the world comes to terms with the sudden and unexpected loss of a basketball icon, others are up in arms over the other eight passengers and the sexual assault charges brought against Kobe in 2003. The latter is what prompted this blog post.

One of my jobs as a human is to pay attention to my physical indicators, or "sensations", when something doesn't sit right with me. Those feelings, that clench in my gut or increase in breathing, have been hitting fairly hard over the past few days as I see people negate Kobe Bryant as a victim because of his past accusation and acknowledgment in a sexual assault case in 2003. 

At first I was not sure what my problem was...after all, it is factual. Kobe was arrested, there was the option to go to trial or to settle and he settled, including a statement read in public in which he acknowledged that the woman did not experience their encounter as consensual. So, why does the focus on his sexual history bother me so much? 

I think it is because of my father. My complicated, painful, so full of love it breaks my soul open relationship that I had with my father, and now with his memory. That is no less complicated than the real deal, trust me. My father was my perpetrator when I was young. Now...he and I went to therapy, we worked through my childhood together...we literally walked through what we could together (mostly facts, I wasn't able to process emotion with him ever). We were not the norm, not the status quo. We were both involved in the 12 steps and we wanted to face our shit in hopes of recovery, and it mostly worked. Though to be fair, no matter the work that we did, there was no undoing the deed he had done. The history was there, still. It was never going to be gone...but it wasn't all there was to us.

My father was not in my life from when I was 12 until I was in my early 20s and he got sober. From there, he and I built a life as father and daughter. I spent a lot of years angry at him. Angry at his neighbor for telling me I was a bad daughter for not visiting more, when being alone in a room with him sometimes was all that I could do...and not for long at that. It was hard, but it was worth it. In the end, I was able to be present for my father as he died. And in that moment, the one where his soul left his body, it became unmistakably clear to me that I loved him. The feeling of love was like a floodgate had opened inside me, and washed over me in waves, it has continued to for three years. 

See? Complicated.

So, this week, a man died in a crash, he was one of nine that perished. He was the most famous, so his worst moment was famous also...and some people cannot get past his moment. SO, they post about it. Reminders, prompts. Putting his worst moment front and center...claiming there is no mourning for a man who has done such a disgusting deed. Forgetting he is a father, a son, a husband, he was a friend, a teammate, a person. Or maybe not forgetting. Perhaps just not caring.

Every time I read the comments about Kobe, I see them in reference to my father. I hear my friends saying my father dying is not a loss to the world. I hear them saying that only 8 people on that helicopter mattered and that the death of the last isn't relevant because of a history he owned over 15 years ago...and I hear them say that my father owning his behavior and trying to grow doesn't matter either.

I am not saying people should not post how they feel about Kobe dying, and their projected value of his worth. Everyone gets to experience things in their own way.  I am simply owning how I am experiencing the comments praising his death. I hear them as the daughter of an admitted sexual assault perpetrator. And my father was a man, who perhaps similar to Kobe, did not and does not deserve to be held down to his worst moments...



My thoughts and prayers are with all of the families, friends and associates of each of the victims in the crash earlier this week.