Zach Gottlieb’s grandfather died from heart failure the same week his high school moved to remote learning in March 2020.
Zach’s dad isn’t around, and his grandfather was his chess partner, fellow Lakers fan and confidante. The combination of his death and pandemic isolation hit Zach hard, but so had a lifetime of messages that strong guys don’t really grieve — or if they do, they certainly don’t talk about it.
Even as Zach, 16, was processing all that, he was reading post after article after well-intentioned email about young people’s mental health, which was already in a precarious place pre-pandemic, and pushed to new lows in the midst of it.
