Father and Daughter Together Forever

/ Fashion & Entertainment / By

Fathers and sons are about camaraderie and manhood but fathers and daughters are about all the things men never learn when growing up. It breaks your heart when we see our daughters cry and melts our heart when they smile. It\’s daughters that bring out all of the best in most men. The photos of Kobe and his daughter Gianna represent the epitome of what it means to be a father. Their smiles will be etched in memoriam upon the hearts and souls of all us. I can’t begin to image the last minutes of that flight, but I know with all my heart, that as a father, he had to be praying that please let my little girl survive.

The weeks of controversy and anger that have unfolded are all part of the grieving process. Everybody wants to tell someone else how to grieve when there’s no book on how to deal with loss. I didn’t know the man or have any feeling one way or the other of him as a person. I don’t have to know the public figure to know that the smile and joy his daughters brought him was boundless. Men are born into the world basically ignorant about a lot of things. However, having a daughter gives us a chance to find out some things about ourselves our fathers could never teach us.

Our daughters teach us patience. They teach us how to be vulnerable. They even teach us that we have a heart. So to Kobe, Gianna, his surviving daughters, and any father that reads this post, the best way for me to sum it up is a poem I came across by Dean Wood titled All Gods Creations.

All Gods Creations

We walked on the beach, just Daddy and me,
And looked for shells in the sand.
We found a starfish holding tight to a rock
Then we walked down the beach holding hands.
He showed me where clams had made holes in a stone;
We watched how the waves filled a pool.
Then he told me all about fish and such things
And he joked, \”Even they go to school.\”
We ran from the waves and made castles of sand.
And talked about Jesus awhile.
I could tell how Dad loved him, Jesus I mean,
From the tear in his eye, and his smile.
We climbed to the top of a really high cliff
  To watch the sun hide in the sea.
Then daddy told me, \”Of all that God made,
His greatest creation was me.\”

By: Dean Wood 7/24/2017