Honor the legacy of everyone killed on Kobe’s helicopter, especially the children

We want to write about the 49ers losing the Super Bowl, or Dusty Baker making a comeback, or Fresno State wrestling living the comeback, or the Dodgers doing whatever it is teams do when not winning championships.

Not here, not today. Not when faced with the time stamp of life, where NBA superstars with complicated pasts and teenaged girls with innocent slates are taken in the same coastal-fogged breath.

We want to explain why Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is an unexplainable talent, and why the Patriots should never have traded Jimmy Garappolo, but to what end?

Three basketball-loving girls aren’t coming home, their promising and amazing and rambunctious lives dashed on a Southern California hill one Sunday ago.

Gianna Bryant, 13. Alyssa Altobelli, 14. Payton Chester, 13.

Those are the names to remember. Their shattered lives are what broke our hearts. They took an unspeakable accident northwest of Los Angeles and made it unbearable to the four ends of the world.

Sure, Kobe Bryant is the name who made this helicopter crash world-famous. His death at age 41 has inspired memorials and murals from here to Hong Kong. His death made grown men weep. We get it.

But, oh, those three kids. We have to remember the ones who never got a chance to make us memories.

They don’t get to play out a Hall of Fame career like Kobe. They’ll never get to graduate from high school, and go to college, and get their first job, and start a family, and see their kids’ kids join the race.

Everyone’s greatest fear – and greatest hope

That could have been my Elise, on her way to a softball tournament. It could have been your son, on his way back from band practice.

If we can learn anything from the senselessness of it all, may we learn this from Gianna, Alyssa and Payton: You don’t have to be an all-world athlete for your life and death to matter.

You absolutely matter.

You’re the only you we’ve got, and you matter more to us than you could ever imagine.

Maybe you come off the B Team bench on the middle school basketball team, like my youngest boy. Maybe sports isn’t your thing, but you can work video production like nobody’s business like my middle kid.

Without you, we come up short. With you, we’ve got a fighting chance to impact our world for good. We need every Gianna and Alyssa and Payton we’ve got, and can never be the same without them.

One of you is going to be the next basketball star to help us forget our problems for a few game-time hours. Another one of you is going to be that scientist who finds a cure for some awful disease that eats away at life.

You’re the next missionary, spreading hope across the globe. You’re the next local volunteer, changing the world one neighborhood at a time.

We need you to give every waking moment the fiercest swing you’ve got. Don’t save anything for tomorrow, because tomorrow doesn’t always come.

Tell the ones you love how much you love them. Teach this next generation every lesson you’ve learned, then step out of the way and let them take it from here.

To say our Giannas can grow up to be the next Kobe Bryant is to lack ambition. May this generation grow up to be everything we’ve yet to be.

We are so sad we never got to know you, girls. May we never forget you, either.

This story was originally published February 1, 2020 at 11:59 AM with the headline "Honor the legacy of everyone killed on Kobe’s helicopter, especially the children."