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'm like you OP. In particular I find it hard to understand the grief over celebrities, even when people say that it's the family/children of the deceased celebrity that they are feeling upset for. Normal- non-famous people die every day and leave family and children behind. It seems strange to me that a famous person and their family provoke such widespread outpourings of grief just because they are famous?

Grief over the death of someone you know is different and people deal with that in their own way.

I've been mopey over a 'celeb' death but not because other people are or its a 'thing'.. but because that particular 'celeb' meant something to me.

So yeah I cried when Victoria Wood died, she meant a lot to me, her songs and jokes and characters are a big part of my life, tangled up with stuff with my Mother and also the town I am from.

Didn't cry when Diana died.. she meant nothing to me, why would I.

Cried and grieved when my mother died but not that much, really, she died in a fairly horrible way (stroke, alcoholism, on her floor for days before we found her)... but in hindsight I had been grieving for the Mother she never would be for a long time before she died and I'd prepared myself for htat to be the way she would go (And told her so, not that it made any odds).

In contrast the death of my dog who I'd had from being a teenager to being an independent adult, knocked me hard and for months on end, I still can't talk about him at length now, a year on - but then unlike my mother, he was my constant companion for 16 years, he was a friend and a support... she wasn't! So it makes sense I'd grieve for him much more acutely than for her.

I have had other dogs die that I haven't been in bits over, more the normal 'this is very sad I miss that dog' stuff, so its not that I am the kind of person who goes nuts over an animal dying but not over people.

There's a family friend who died around 3 years ago, she was a constant and positive influence in my life my WHOLE life, I still cannot believe she is gone, I feel the void she has left on a daily basis...

Grief is so very personal and its not just about you its also about the person or dog or cat or whatever, who has gone, and your relationship with them.

The only time I cried over someone I didn't know very well was a friend of my sister's - I'd only met her once. She'd gone through a horrible divorce, and was really struggling. Three years on, she died very suddenly from a brain bleed. I think it hurt because her daughter was in the same year as my niece and her DS was the same age as my son.

I'm a bit of an emotional cryer over certain things, happy as well as sad, but I hate anyone seeing me cry.

The only celebrity death that has really upset me in recent years was Victoria Wood, I think because so much of her comedy has shaped and influenced my own life. I cried a bit that day, obviously not in front of anyone.

Recently a local young boy died in a house fire, and a few days ago, his mum took her own life. Although I haven't cried, I think about them both every day, and it's made me really sad. I think that's perfectly normal.

Of course it's nothing like a family member or friend dying But the celebrity threads I've seen (Bowie, Prince, Cohen) are for the most part just people reminiscing: favourite songs, first gigs, what they were doing/ who they were in love with at the time etc etc.
It's not unlike what you tend to do at funerals. The dominant feeling is normally 'fuck, where has my life gone?' It seems perfectly understandable to me.

Of course flo, and it makes you very aware of your own mortality! A sobering thought.

Exactly.

I've always said that there is no law or rule book about how one should grieve. Grief affects everyone differently, and it is affected by many factors: how well did you know the person, how did they impact your life - was it negatively or positively, is it someone you were close to, did a person touch your life in some significant way etc... etc...

I love my parents but I'm not massively close to them on an emotional level. I know for a fact that I am much more "prepared" for when they die than my sister, who is in many ways very emotionally dependent on them. I will be sad when they die, but I will cope with it. There are other people in my life though, who's deaths would be far more powerful to me. People I see and talk to on a daily basis, my partner, my best friend, my godson etc... while I am not related to them I am closer to them on many levels and I would miss them terribly.

Grief is a personal thing and it is simply how one processes loss. That loss doesn't have to be a living person. When I had my hysterectomy I went through a "grieving-like" process for the loss of the child I would never have. It's the loss of someone or even someTHING - an idea, a dream for one's life. If you have worked for something all your life, for example, then something happens that means you will never realise that dream, it is common for the person to go through a grieving process. The difficulty is that it IS a personal thing - so while a loss is very real and raw for someone, not everyone feels it on the same level and so people's reactions to it vary considerably.

As for celebrities - I find hysteria a bit much - but I can understand a person being sad about the loss where the person has been significant in someone's life - albeit indirectly. If someone's music is a massive part of your life, or the work of an actor has particularly touched you in some way, it's not unreasonable to be sad at their passing. The likes of Alan Rickman, Patrick Swayze and Robin Williams - I found their deaths very sad. That's not to say it affects me on a daily basis or I cried, but I was definitely moved. It depends largely on whether a celebrity has had a signifiant influence on your life or even if you have met them.

This has always baffled me, the great outpouring of grief when someone famous dies. Myself when I hear I just think "how to sad", but get on with my day. Some people go on about it like they knew the person. Likewise if an elderly relative dies, I mean to say if they were in their 90's, they were hardly going to live much longer anyway. Don't get me wrong I'm sorry they died, but I'm not upset. Grief for me is only for people that i have been emotionally close to, otherwise I'm not that bothered. I find I'm more empathetic to younger men/women, or children that have died. I think that's very sad.

leaveit I don't think you need to know someone well, or even at all, to feel some kind of empathy or connection. Famous people/celebrities are generally more accessible and communicative with their fans nowadays, thanks to the internet and social media so it's inevitable that people will relate to them as fellow human beings rather than distant figures.

On one of the Leonard Cohen threads, people were sharing favourite lyrics and clips. One poster linked to a radio documentary I hadn't heard and I'm going to listen this afternoon. I'm sure I'll be thinking about the first time I saw him. It was with my first serious boyfriend and I was actually only pretending to be a fan to get him to go out with me but I got hooked.

So Cohen stayed. The boyfriend? I don't even know if he's still alive. If I cry, that's the kind of thing I'll be crying about.

You can't police sadness.

Never been able to wrap my head around the celebrity death thing , I was completely bemused by the response to Princess Diana dying for instance. I am quite odd emotionally I think, and this is something that I would change about myself if I could. My Grandfather was my most beloved family member and as he was dying, i completely detached from him - I could not feel anything and my Grandmother was really angry with me (knowing he loved me so much). After his death I got on with it, answered calls in the aftermath and made small talk and smiled, but oddly I could not listen to certain songs that reminded me of him for years afterwards. I can't cry sad tears in front of anyone.

Celebrity deaths make me sad/shocked if it was someone I liked, and I might get misty-eyed over my favourite tracks later that day. You can really feel the loss of their creativity, especially if they were still working, and of course there is sympathy for their families. But I wouldn't call it genuine grief on my part. However, other people may feel those connections differently, perhaps because of times/memories/similarities in their own lives. I can believe that they might be genuinely grieving.

I'm not sure that I have ever deeply grieved, even for my father (a troubled and often violent man, for whom my feelings were mixed). I cried when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and certainly felt sad, numb and shocked for a while after he died. That was 15 years ago and I can't say that I miss him now. I don't visit his grave. I have no idea how I'll feel when my mother dies as our relationship has also been difficult. But if I think of dh, or one of my children, dying, my brain just ices over. I simply can't imagine what I would do.

Thanks all! This has made really interesting reading!

Flo, it was me posted the Cohen radio docs. His death is a huge thing here (Canada). I don't think anyone's wanting to police sadness, just curious - & perhaps a bit baffled - at the different reactions.

It strikes me that there's a few repeating narratives on the thread.

1. I cry at sad adverts, I cry at loads of things, my emotions are near the surface
2. I cry for strong relationships
3. I cry for the vulnerable
4. I am good at stepping back & evaluating my emotions and tend not to cry easily (I think I'm one of these, and part of the rationalizing is accepting that the death of the elderly is part of life)
5. who has time to cry?

I've found it fascinating and am feeling less like an odd duck, as clearly there's a few of us out there! And while I'm prepared to allow that, odd as it seems to me, some people are still upset about the death of a pet in 1929 (I'm looking at you, late mum of mine, who would tear up about the death of Tabby in, literally, 1929), it's just as normal and human to feel sad but but go and do the dishes or pay the tv license etc.

I have gotten very cryingish over the death of romances in my life. That tears me to bits, that you trust someone, they're your moon & stars, & then they turn out to be heartless bastards. The death of trust gets to me as it's people letting each other down. No-one, suicides included, dies w the purpose of being a disappointment, so it seems more understandable, if that makes sense.

Hey I hadn't realised it was you Thank you again, I'm really grateful. I keep putting off listening cos I don't want to be disturbed. I've been thinking a lot about the ex boyfriend who introduced me to Cohen - he didn't enjoy good health as a child (ex bf not Cohen) so it's quite possible he's no longer alive which makes me sad and weirds me out too.

The 'policing grief' wasn't directed at you. You just sounded curious and curiosity is good. There has been some policing and judging by other posters but you're not responsible for that - you can't police your own threads either!

I must be cold hearted as well, I simply cannot get upset about 'celeb' deaths. I just think, oh that was a bit sad...' Like it was sad for Princess Diana's young sons...but that was it.
Leonard Cohen ...meh, he was 82.

When my mother died it knocked me sideways, even though it was expected...

I do cry at sad movies, like Goodnight Mr Tom and so on..

I agree with a lot of what you've said OP. My nana died in the summer and I didn't really cry. She'd had 86 great years and two shit ones. She had had enough and was ready. I just felt relief for her really.

When people closer to me have died, I've taken a couple of days off then cracked on. I look back at my ancestors and one of my great aunts lost seven of her children in two years to an illness that would not be life threatening nowadays. When I wonder how she coped, I think that she probably just got on with things and continued to look after her remaining five children.

I think there's a lot to be said for trying to get on with things as best you can. Obviously there's a real place for grieving and grief counselling and seeking help from your friends and family, but when a mother at my son's school couldn't do the school run for two weeks because her cat died last term, I had very little sympathy. Sitting at home and sobbing over a cat is. It going to do anyone any good

No probs, Flo.

I think when other people's behaviour is the polar opposite of our own it can be difficult not to think "give your head a wobble".

I'm annoyed w my current boss as no matter what I email him o get these one-word answers. I think it's fucking rude as I know he can type (as he managed 2 whole paragraphs when he thought I'd made a mistake). If I were more evolved I'd let it go, but I want to shout "be more like me! Get some social skills! Stop making me uncomfortable w your weird one-word responses".

I'm really glad people took the time to mull this over and respond as it has made me feel a bit less baffled (& occasionally judgey).

My cat died years ago, and I still remember him fondly. I had him when I was going through some horrible times being bullied at school and being depressed and not getting on with my parents and would talk to him. He waited at the bottom of the road for me to get off the school bus and would sleep in my bed. Everyone always said he was more of a dog than a cat, he was very loyal.

I think that although he was "just a cat" he felt/feels more than that to me because he felt like the only friend I had. I love my dog, but now that I have a decent relationship with my folks, a husband, kids, friends she would not be mourned as strongly as my cat was. Pets can mean a lot to their owner if it feels like they have been there for them when people haven't, so I don't judge people who cry over their animals.

This is a bit judgey, but while I utterly understand grieving the loss of a dog or cat (or other companion mammal), I'd struggle more to understand strong grief about a goldfish or snake.

Cats and dogs (pigs etc) can show us affection and loyalty & be great companions.

Though if someone can't do their ordinary tasks like the school run then they probably need a spot of counselling.

I wouldn't cry at a celebrity dying. I feel sad if I see their family members crying at funerals although I don't think I've shed a tear for them. Worse if they're young I think

I shed a tear at films, adverts, the news etc, not hysterically though

I cried when my best friend passed away unexpectedly though. Full on meltdown couldn't breathe crying. I didn't think I had that in me. I guess age and an unexpected death caught me off guard

Grief hits everyone differently though. Don't think I'd judge anyone for how they deal with the death of friends/family as it must be very individual

I shed a tear when watching Jo Cox's husband's speech about her. But normally, no a famous person's death wouldn't make me cry.

I was saddened by Amy Winehouse's death as I was a fan of her music and, being the same age as her, it felt like such a massive waste at such a young age.

I remember my niece asking a similar question when a classmate's mother died. She said lots of the girls in her class were in floods of tears. DN thought there was something wrong with her because she felt upset for her clasmate but didn't cry. We tried to explain people feel grief differently.

I actually found it disconcerting to be the only person crying at FIL's funeral. I did love him and had known him about 15 years but I didn't love him like his son or his wife did. Why didn't they cry? Please let someone cry for me.

tbh it is hard to cry at your own parents' funeral because you have to hold it together all day and people are watching you.
I cried more at my childhood next door neighbour's funeral than I did at my own mother's...