Nine dead in a helicopter crash

Lurline Sweet
2 min readJan 27, 2020

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Kobe Bryant and 13-year-old daughter feared dead.

LA mourns Kobe.

The world mourns Kobe.

His wife and three daughters at

home. One can imagine the

wailing or the stony

silence of their house.

Two young ones who will not

understand for years. A teenager and her

mother clutching one another or slamming doors.

Across town, a teenager without her mother, father, or

sister. Her brother a thousand miles north.

Will he return to care for her?

Will he choose his own young life?

Will she go to live with a friend, aunt, or with Kobe’s widow —

united by a disastrous helicopter flight?

The world idolizes two fathers: Kobe and Alto.

Little said about the mother and the 13-year-old daughters.

Nine dead in a helicopter crash.

Five named. Four more unnamed.

Stay tuned, tomorrow’s news.

LA idolizes Kobe.

The world idolizes Kobe.

Girl cried rape.

Evidence to prove it: her

blood on his shirt, her body

lacerated, her neck

wrung, her medical exam

immediate. Kobe

paid her. No day in court. He

paid her. No rape on record.

LA mourns Kobe.

The world mourns Kobe.

Feminists cry rape, don’t forget the

rape in your obituaries and your candle-lit vigils.

Let he among us without sin…

Thirteen years ago, I

dove into the art of Woody and Bellow.

I spent nine months on oxygen, going deeper and

acclimating, deeper and deeper.

Baby’s got the bends.

Bellow’s daughter, 4 years old at his deathbed,

his skin and hair, wrinkled and grey.

Today his daughter is 20, wrestles with her father’s legacy.

Three grown sons, aware of their father and his

five marriages. Woody’s five children,

six stepchildren, make their

own sense of their childhoods. I won’t

mention his stepdaughter-wife.

The world exalts.

The world condemns.

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