AIBU to not grasp some kinds of grief?

[lizzieoak]

I'm curious about what upsets people when famous people die? As an example, I was a massive fan of Amy Winehouse & I was sad when she died. Primarily thought "oh, how sad for her poor family" & a little bit thought (& still think) "how sad for people who loved her writing & voice that it's all ended so soon."

But, horrible monster that I am, I didn't cry, as I didn't know her personally and, sadly, it was hardly a huge surprise. Ditto the death of our treasured Mr Cohen. He was 82.

On the non-famous end, while I was sad when my dad died when I was in my 20's, I thought "well, today I'm sad, but in a year I bet days will pass when I don't even think of dad". A friend of mine had a parent die around the same age and he spends the whole month, every year, 30 years later, being Quite Upset. Slight difference in the manner of our parent's deaths as my dad had been sick on & off since I was a kid whereas my friend's mum died of cancer within a year of getting ill.

I totally grasp that a loss of a child could destroy a person. It's out of the natural order of things. And the loss of a spouse - I can see how that could be pretty devastating.

But I worry a bit that I feel sad but not grief-stricken about the loss of people I love (older adult family members thus far) & people whose work I've admired.

Is it just that I'm a cold fish in this regard? Can anyone upended by the death of an elderly person, or Princess Diana, explain to me ... well, just what it is they're upset about?

Hard to convey tone online sometimes, but I'm not being sarkie, I really don't grasp this (though am otherwise emotionally normal).

Anecdotally, my male friends seem more thrown by the death of elderly rellies, whereas women seem more emotional than men are by the death of famous people. Not necessarily true across society, but in my circle I've noticed this.

I had a mc the day Bowie died. I didn't give a flying fuck about david Bowie, an old and sick man dying that I didn't know. I was told I was cruel and thoughtless by a few people because he gave people memories - but the memories and his music are still there, his passing doesn't mean that people have to stop remembering the contribution his music made to their lives and experiences.

I'll probably get flamed for saying this but I do judge people who try to turn the death of celebrities or people they didn't know well into being about them. My heart went out to Bowie et al's families, I do know that related grief but I have no time for dramalamas who make it all about them.

The drama llamas of Facebook make me cringe when they get going with their 'tributes' to dead famous people. Such things like 'god how am I supposed to face the day and get on with life now Whitney has gone ', piss off.

I've found that the anticipation or thought of someone's death is often worse than the death itself for me. I've lost both parents and a sibling, all out of the blue but I was one of those kids that worried about death and would get myself in knots thinking about it. Then when it actually happened, it wasn't as bad as I'd tortured myself with. I didn't cry at any of the funerals when everyone around me wailed, it was odd.

I know this is unbelievably selfish but I only worry about death if it will directly affect me. So losing my DP fills me with horror but losing an aunt, not so much!

‘Gradually it came to him that there was so little pity for the dead in grief. That it was a wailing for something lost, by only a very few, and so a ceremony must be made of death, to hide what all must know to be true: that the death of a human being means so very little.’

Grief is about self. That might sound like a criticism to some but it isn't: it is a statement of the obvious. That is why Syrians can die in their tens of thousands and no-one on MN mentions it much but people weep and wail over their cat or Leonard Cohen.
Grief is also nothing whatever to do with another person. No-one dead or with a grievous injury was ever positively effected by someone else emoting over them. That too is just obvious. (Prayer is particularly pointless but it does make some people feel better about themselves for having nothing useful to give. The same is true of ululation, a tradition I am glad we don't have in the UK.)
So people should be free to grieve as they wish, but if anyone is rendered incapable by grief for an animal or someone they have never met, they might do well to reflect on what is actually going on in their minds and lives that might need to change. I would go further and suggest that if one is genuinely upset, perhaps one should use that as a spur to do something positive and altruistic; to make the grief mean something; to commemorate the loss by minimising someone else's vulnerability to grief.

I'm finding this thread so refreshing. It's filled with amazingly worded posts and beautiful quotes; makes quite the change from some of the other threads being brawled through at the minute!

My mum died on the same day as princess Diana and I am the same age as Prince William. I don't feel that it was particular sad as in hugely out of the ordinary. A shame definitely.

I did feel aggrieved when I lost my dad though.

I felt I was owed one parent!

Of course it's about me. It's about me coming to terms with impending old age and death.

Haven't RTFT - this bit jumped out though 'But also I've always felt a bit that I never had the space to not cope as there was always someone pushing ahead in the non-coping. Someone had to deal w practicalities, & that was me. My parents weren't, in some regards, terribly practical'. I think sometimes that applies to other people too - so they may not have had the head space to grieve someone they love at the time they died, so that grief gets bottled up and projected onto something like the death of a famous person at a later time..

We're all so very different. I'm a crier. I do cry quite easily and I do warn people that it happens. I've been known to start appointments (such as when we were in council tax debt and I couldn't see a way to deal with it and went in to the town hall to speak to someone about it) with "I will almost certainly cry but please don't worry, just ignore it, it'll be fine". I get cross with people who say you should be able to control yourself. I can control anger just fine, I can hide fear, but if I'm going to cry I'm going to cry and it's hardly ever possible to prevent it.
I don't think how much someone cries or doesn't cry signifies how badly they do or don't feel. My dad rarely cries but he feels very deeply. My brother has not been known to cry since childhood but he also feels grief and pain like anyone else. My dh cries over sloppy crap like movies but his response to real life pain is generally utter silence.
As for celebrity death, Patrick Swayze's made me cry a lot and I can still get quite emotional thinking about it (not to the point of tears but far more than I think is reasonable for someone I never met!). I suspect though that that is caught up in a weird mishmash of stuff such as how much he reminded me of someone quite central to my life and how Dirty Dancing was my most beloved film ever and how one of my coping techniques when my mental health was shit was to get ready to leave the house with the final scene playing on the video as I could generally force myself out of the door if I did that.
We're all different and it's all fine to be whoever we are.

I think I'm like you OP. I have never grieved over a celebrity death and really couldn't understand the protracted hysteria when Diana died. I am always sorry to hear that talented individuals like Prince and David Bowie have died and won't produce any more work but don't feel anything like real sorrow. I felt awful for a few days when Jo Cox died because her death was a public act of hate against the things I believe in but since I don't know her I wouldn't say that I felt grief.. My father died very suddenly about 6 years ago (I was pregnant at the time, so could be expected to be hormonal) and I was shocked and sad and felt regret that he didn't get more years to enjoy his life but I didn't cry and I think about him now without feeling particularly sad. I think that, despite having been extremely fortunate in my life I have always had the slightly pessimistic (realistic?) attitude that bad things will happen and when they do you just crack on with things.

I don’t want my grief to be a spectacle for others.

This, very much.

I'm an intensely private person, which some people misinterpret as being cold or emotionally remote. I used to bury uncomfortable feelings, after a protracted period of failing to process them internally. I had an alcohol problem for many years - my overwhelming need for privacy and dislike of histrionic outpourings of emotion was a factor in this. I preferred to shut myself away and self medicate, in order to present 'normally' on the outside as much as an alcohol abuser can.

My dad is still alive, but very ill. He has Huntington's disease, and parts of him are fading away every day. I've been grieving for him since he was diagnosed last year. I'm getting teary just writing this, knowing that he won't survive, knowing the awful inevitability of the illness that's slowly but surely claiming him.

I honestly don't know how I'll react in the wake of his death. He's a difficult man, who damaged me deeply growing up. My love for him over the years has always been somewhat compromised, tempered by his attitude and actions towards me growing up, but I will be devastated. I know I'll grieve, as I am now, for what I always wanted him to be.

My instinct will be, as always, to hold it together. His death won't be a shock, far from it, but I'll never be ready for it. I'm as afraid of that as I am of losing him. But there will be no public outpouring of grief, no constant displays of weeping and wailing, because it just isn't in me.

Grief is about self. That might sound like a criticism to some but it isn't: it is a statement of the obvious. That is why Syrians can die in their tens of thousands and no-one on MN mentions it much but people weep and wail over their cat or Leonard Cohen.

I would definitely weep bitter tears over my cat. I didn't cry about Cohen, loved his music but there's a perspective. I didn't know him so yes, I was sad but that's it. And not mentioning the fact that someone's death actually bothers me and touches me (like for example those who are in war conflicts or trying to escape them) doesn't mean I feel nothing.

I don't cry when anybody dies. Famous people, family, or friends.

I had quite a big family growing up, and we were all quite close. During my teens and 20s, most of them died. There were 4 years when 3 people died per year. My dad, paternal grandmother, and cousin all died suddenly within the space of 6 weeks. I was distraught the first few deaths, but then it became the norm. Everybody was going to die, and I just went through the motions each time.

There are 5 of us left in the whole family now. The last to die was my gran, 2 years ago. I didn't cry when she died, and I didn't cry at her funeral. Although obviously I was sad.

This makes me sound like such a cold cow, DH always makes comment about how cold and emotionless I am. But, I've seen death so many times, I grew up with it. It's just something that happens. That's quite said in itself, I know.

sad in itself*

I was taken utterly by surprise by my depth of feeling over losing David Bowie. Sleb deaths never bothered me before, i feel sad for some but it'a passing thought. "Oh..thats sad, I was fond of his her/work"

It's not as if I even listened to his music daily nowadays, but his music was very important in my formative years. His death was symbolic of the passing of an era for me. I was gutted :(

This is a fascinating thread - Lizzie, your comment about 'practising' for your dad's death really struck me as this is something I did since childhood, and while it was awful, it didn't hit me quite as hard as I'd expected, perhaps because of all those inner 'rehearsals'. I'm terrified about losing my mum - she's 78 and still sprightly, but again, I do that weird self-preparation thing.

I lost my best friend six months after my dad died and I didn't (and never have) cried over her. I don't know whether it's because it was so close to losing my dad, or whether because my initial reaction was anger (she took her own life), or shame, or just the fact that at 28, it didn't seem feasible that she was gone - and seven years later, it still doesn't; so much so that I often forget she's no longer here and store up things to tell her.

I have never cried over a celebrity. I've been shocked and saddened, but never moved to tears. I remember when Diana died and the staff I worked with were sobbing and hugging each other, while I felt completely unmoved - it was a disturbing feeling, but then I didn't know her.

I had a colleague who responded very strongly to 9/11. She wasn't just shocked and upset like all the rest of us. She was absolutely in pieces. Barely functioning at work and really questioning what life was all about.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that the unexpected loss of a close family member just a few weeks previously had been compounded by the events in the US and was the last straw for her as far as coping went. For some people the trigger from the past might be much less obvious to those around them. And of course we all respond differently to things anyway.

Another parent at the DCs' school died suddenly and I burst into tears when I heard. I only knew the person by sight. I simply felt so sorry for the children and other people close to the parent. Not sad for myself, just sad for the people who were going to be so hugely affected and for whom I couldn't really do much.

I cry at young people's death-

The lovely looking boy in the Croydon tram crash I can't get sad about old people dying - (my interpretation of old gets pushed back year by year ;)) I felt David Bowies life and death was wonderful- no tears from me/and Leonard cohen-

dad died a couple of months ago but he was old and it was/is the natural order. I miss him tho.

Don't think I have ever cried over a celeb. The carry on over Diana appaled me - put me in mind of the song in Evita "Why all this howling, hysterical sorrow". At work we sent had sent out reminders for unpaid bills, so we opened a book to see which of us call receptionists would get the first "I can't go and pay my bill, as Diana is dead" call. There were several, and none of them had ever met her. We asked - "Oh, I so sorry you're upset - did you know her well?" But, I must be (as someone else said) a cold fish. The day after my mother died I had been booked to do a meet and greet with several other people who were told that I wouldn't be there. I was. What else could I do, my mother would not have approved of weeping

IT took me more than a year to actually cry after my DF died. He passed away 3 weeks after being told that he had cancer. He had been back and forth to the doctors and was misdiagnosed (he was 57).

I think that it's true that when we grieve, we are grieving for ourselves. I grieved for the grandchildren he'd never see and for the jokes we'd never share. It's been more than 24 years since he went, and even now I'll think to myself 'Dad would've liked that' or 'Wish I could share this news with him.'

I'm not outwardly emotional, and have been flamed for it, but grief is personal and that should be respected. Sometimes in private, I'll cry for the child I lost, but outwardly, to other people, I've long gotten over it.

My work brings me into contact with the dying. Some die a matter of hours after our meeting. I have cried about the young ones, or those with young children. In private though. I also found myself weirdly upset about victoria wood too. Again privately.

Having seen what I have I struggle to understand emotional collapse over pets or the very elderly.

why would you assume that people who demonstrate strong feelings of grief over pets and celebrities have not known the loss of someone close to them?

Sometimes it can be an outlet for their grief

Or they might just express themselves differently

I am worried that someone is going to look at this thread and feel like shit that they had to take a month off work when their mother died. You can't compare one person's needs with another in that situation