If there’s anything the movie This Is Where I Leave You taught me — besides that Tina Fey should not do accents — it’s about shiva, the Jewish tradition in response to the death of an immediate family member. I’d heard of shiva before but for the first time saw it dramatized in the film, and the images have stayed with me. Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of opportunities lately to reflect on the practice of grief.

To wit: the spate of celebrity deaths, encompassing everyone from Robin Williams to Kate Spade and, most recently, Kobe Bryant. While Williams’ and Spade’s deaths were fraught with discussions of mental illness, Bryant’s has been a beast of a different nature: an accident, a young life ended too soon, the included loss of his daughter and seven others on the plane. There are countless angles from which to examine the situation.

To be continued, over at Mockingbird!