Vanessa Bryant was admittedly looking forward to her 38th birthday on Tuesday, May 5. — It marked the day she would open a letter she discovered from her late husband, Kobe Bryant. The Lakers legend died in a tragic helicopter crash in Calabasas, CA on January 26. The couple’s teenage daughter Gianna “Gigi” Bryant also perished in the crash.
“Yesterday I found an envelope labeled To: The Love of my Life. From, Tu Papi,” she wrote in a post on instagram, alongside an image of her holding the yellow envelope. Vanessa’s hand covered black ink that was written in cursive on the front of the card. “I waited to open one more letter on my birthday. It gave me something to look forward to today,” she added.
As for what was inside? — “The irony is that Kobe had a photo of me drawn with an Angel holding me up by an artist on the cover. Missing the Love of my Life and my sweet little Mamacita – my fellow Taurus,” she wrote, talking about her daughter Gigi, who would’ve turned 14 on May 1. Vanessa paid tribute to her “baby girl” in a separate post on Instagram.
(Photo credit: Vanessa Bryant/Instagram)
“Grateful to wake up to my 3 sweet girls today. Wish we were all together,” she concluded, adding six red heart emojis and the hashtag, “#MyBirthdayWish.”
In April, Vanessa and Kobe would’ve celebrated their 19th wedding anniversary. In addition to Gianna, the couple share daughters Natalia, 17, Bianka, 3, and 10-month-old Capri.
Kobe and his daughter GiGi were two of nine passengers aboard his private Sikorsky S-76 chopper that crashed in the foggy hills of Calabasas, CA on Sunday, January 26. The other victims in the crash were identified as, John Altobelli, the head baseball coach at Orange Coast College, his wife Keri and their daughter Alyssa Altobelli; Sarah Chester and her daughter Payton Chester; Christina Mauser and the pilot, Ara Zobayan.
Gianna and her two Mamba Academy teammates, Alyssa and Payton were selected as honorary picks during the 2020 WNBA draft on April 17. Our thoughts are with the families affected by this tragedy.