Vanessa Bryant Pays Tribute to ‘Best Girl Dad’ Kobe Bryant on Second Father’s Day After His Death

Vanessa Bryant/Instagram

Vanessa Bryant is honoring her late husband Kobe Bryant as “the best girl dad” to their four daughters.

On Sunday, the mother of four, 39, paid tribute to the NBA icon with a Father’s Day tribute on Instagram.

Sharing a photograph of the proud dad sitting beside his four daughters, Vanessa captioned the post, writing, “To the best girl dad~ Happy Father’s Day, Papi.”

“We love you forever and always, always and forever,” she continued, adding, “Love you always, Nani, Gigi, B.B, Koko and VB ❤️.”

She also posted a series of tributes to celebrate daughter Capri’s second birthday.

“Happy 2nd Birthday, Capri! Mommy, Daddy, Nani, Gigi and B.B. love you so much! You are our beautiful ray of light,” she wrote in one sweet post. “Thank you for bringing so much joy and love into our lives. May you be blessed with many more happy, healthy and wonderful birthdays. We love you Koko-Bean! Happy birthday!!!! 😘❤️🎂” 

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RELATED: Vanessa Bryant on ‘Finding the Light in Darkness’: ‘Kobe and Gigi Motivate Me to Keep Going’

Sunday marks the second Father’s Day since Vanessa lost the basketball star and their 13-year-old daughter Gianna in a helicopter crash on January 26, 2020. The pair are also parents to Natalia, 18, Bianka, 4, and Capri.

Along with Kobe and Gianna, Payton Chester, 13, Sarah Chester, 46, Alyssa Altobelli, 14, Keri Altobelli, 46, John Altobelli, 56, Christina Mauser, 38, and pilot Ara Zobayan, 50, were also killed in the Calabasas, California, crash.

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Earlier this year, while chatting with PEOPLE for the Women Changing the World issue, Vanessa spoke about how her world changed in an instant and how the grief from losing her husband and daughter still brings her to her knees.

“I can’t say that I’m strong every day. I can’t say that there aren’t days when I feel like I can’t survive to the next,” she told PEOPLE in March. “This pain is unimaginable [but] you just have to get up and push forward. Lying in bed crying isn’t going to change the fact that my family will never be the same again. But getting out of bed and pushing forward is going to make the day better for my girls and for me. So that’s what I do.”

RELATED VIDEO: Vanessa Bryant Pays Tribute to Late Daughter Gianna with Mambacita Tattoo

Back in April, Vanessa and Natalia rang in Mother’s Day early for the matriarch and starred in a new short film for Bulgari and Vogue titled A Mother’s Legacy, which “shares an intimate glance into their special relationship, revealing how they inspire, motivate and empower one another,” a release explained.

In their video – shot at a home in the Beachwood Canyon area of Los Angeles – Natalia says, “People may not remember what you did or may not remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel.”

“That’s the lesson that I’ve carried throughout my life,” she goes on to tell Vanessa. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known. We connect on a whole different level, and I feel like that’s rare in mother-daughter relationships.”

Vanessa couldn’t speak more highly of her oldest child, either, telling Natalia, “I wish that I had someone like you when I was growing up.”

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