Anniversary

 

Time drifts imperceptibly. We’re in our sanctuaries, waiting it out. Screens swipe left to right. The passing parade is like a drug, until particular milestones jar us awake.

During a glorious career, you flew higher than we ever thought possible. We couldn’t have known what would follow. A year has passed, a millions new angels circle in the dark…or light? You never got to say the things you might.

Close our eyes and remember. The jutting jaw, the pump-fakes and step-backs, the drives into waiting thickets. The anger and joy. Down the line, you went further. Past the line, past all limits. Soaring out of bounds.

He was the most uncompromising athlete of his generation, or at least the most successful implacable athlete. There are too many stories to tell or that have been forgotten, about those who never found the fame or heights of Kobe Bryant. He willed, worked, pushed, struggled and succeeded, past his contemporaries. Years after the countless headlong rushes, he began to rein it in. Could it be called compromise? Perhaps. There’s a middle territory where battles occur. Sometimes, there’s nothing but the battle.

“I never saw the end of the tunnel," he wrote. "I only saw myself running out of one.”

Time passes, slowly. It didn’t use to feel like this. A year of living in a dark viral overload, of hearing numbers that harden us. Statistics used to be fun. Anniversaries pass, markers are extended, goals are questioned and repositioned. We live with loss, and living itself becomes a labyrinth. The walls grow higher and the journey more uncertain, our voices absorbed in a dream state.

He would not have seen things so ephemerally. He would have considered the places where lines intersect. He would have planned a new line of attack. We aren’t you. Our angels are still crying in the dark.

An outpouring of love and remembrances puts a pause on our day. Former teammates, family and friends remember a girl and her dad. We read and remember as well. My own daughter still has a Lakers t-shirt I gave her, brought home long ago from a fan giveaway game. It became her familiar and comfortable night shirt through the many years. She is careful these days about the world around her, a product of the times. I can’t imagine what I couldn’t even write.

You can try to shape a memory through words, but there is only who he was and what he did. A younger player who fired in all directions, a scowl turning to smile, pieces of light jabbing through the haze. Someone isolated before he was revered, an iconic statesman in his retirement years. There was a family, healthy and happy. He learned and came out the other side in real and meaningful ways. But a tear occurred in the time continuum. A ruffling sound, blanketed and stilled.

The temperature is dropping and I put a leash on the dog. Heading out to capture what’s left of the fleeting sun, passing giant aloes that rim the sidewalk. The world of temporal time and space. Down inside, you remember. He flew higher than we ever thought he might.