Last Monday, as we joined the world to grieve the shocking passage of basketball great Kobe Bryant, we focused primarily on how his death diminished us (read post here.)

When reports emerged last week that a political reporter with Washington Post had in her account of Kobe’s death included a link to a story about a rape allegation against him, which incurred the wrath of some grieving fans who threatened to rape her and kill her, the matter of how we are diminished by his death resurfaced with the following anchors:

• There will always be those who attempt to ‘moderate’ the kind of widespread grief that followed Kobe’s death
• There are still those who believe in ‘tit for tat,’ even though in practice, it is actually ‘exceedingly greater tit for tat.’ For how in God’s good earth is raping and murder a matching response to the ‘typed infraction’ of the reporter? Does rape and murder make the grieving easier? Does it bring more honour to the memory of Kobe?
• Grieving occasioned by physical accidents usually contain varying amount of anger leading to a search for scapegoats, who to blame and persons on whom we may want to vent, etc

Adding all three factors to those mentioned in the earlier post under reference further confirm the fact that the death of any beloved individual diminishes us immeasurably.