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.

new grief prods old grief

I'm glad I found this thread!

I am with you on this, OP. I was slightly sad to hear of the passing of Bowie, Prince, Amy Winehouse, etc. but I didn't know them. I can't grieve.
I feel far more upset by the death of close friends and parents although I feel that with each year that passes, the pain lessens. I still miss them, and wish they were around, but I can't change what has happened.

I do get a little irritated (and yes, that probably makes me cruel and nasty) by people who seem to publicly wring it all out or post it all over FB. I can think of two people of my acquaintance who have set up shrines, I kid you not, to Bowie and their recently deceased cat, respectively. Photos of the shrines, and in the case of the cat, the casket of kitty ashes, complete with maudlin poem.

I confess I shed a tear when Terry Pratchett died. But I didn't feel the need to publicly weep or post about it all over social media. I find the pointless deaths of people (and of course children) overseas because of lack of medicine, war, flood or famine far more upsetting.

I do feel sad when celebrities die, but dont cry. I find it hard to cry at funerals too. Im not cold, but I tend to do my crying beforehand and though I do get tears in my eyes, I don't cry. I hate it, because I tgink people must think me uncaring. I will prob be different when my parents go.

my mam is the same as me, but parents birthdays and christmasses are hard for her. They put flowers on the grave every mothers/fathers day and christmas and I will do the same.

I didn't cry a lot when my DM died but when Dad died 10 years later I was very upset, why I don't know perhaps it was with my Dad dying it was the end of a big part of my life. I missed both of my parents equally.
We have always had cats, but when we moved house 20 years ago we got a ginger tom kitten, he was a huge part of our lives and all the neighbours knew him and loved him.
As a family we were distraught when he had to be put to sleep and years on the adult Dc's still say how they miss him.

Grief is different for everyone, I never feel anything more than a touch of sadness for celebs who die, but I constantly grieve for my dear friend who had early onset alzheimers and no longer knows me when I visit her.

I lost one of my parents as a teenager and all my grandparents were also dead by then. I think that changed my perspective on grief and certainly the over the top grieving for celebrities.

I was shocked when David Bowie died because his music was a part of my youth and it was a reminder that those years are behind me. I didn't cry or mourn because I didn't know the man but I did become a bit more aware of my own mortality.

I've noticed, too, that for many of us (posters) who had to cope w death from childhood, we seem to have normalized it?

My dad didn't die till I was a young adult, but he had some very close calls. So I'd been rehearsing that since age 8. I was also aware that my step-sibs' mum had died when they were little, so it seemed to be something adults did. The first few adults I knew who died, I was not close to (grandparents, aunt I'd met once). So I observed the ritual without great emotional investment.

Having said that, maybe I am just funny about death. My very beloved cat who we'd had for 14 years, died when I was a teenager and I was just ... a bit sad. Thought "well, that's a shame, I'll miss old Tigger". Mostly felt grateful to have had such a good friend for so long.

I was pretty blase about death until it started happening to my family and my friends and to people my age. Now I think it's absolutely outrageous and I can't understand why we're all so chilled about it. (I am partly joking but only partly.)

I am always (privately) skeptical about the Weepers & Wailers. I think when grief is truly eviscerating it robs you of the enery to behave in such a histrionic fashion.

But, then I am always quite self contained and dislike very overt displays of emotion (because I distrust them). Sympathy from others makes me uncomfortable. I much prefer to do my grieving privately, and work through the process inwardly.

Most of the time, I'm blithe and breezy by nature and only have very deep feelings about certain things. But those things, I am very private about.

You won't ever see me splashing my feelings all over FB, or gushing to friends/family how much I love, love, love them. Talk is cheap...instead I show that I love them. I am 100% loyal, I never betray a confidence and I'll give you my last £5 if you need it.

Also, I won't be a hypocrisy about grieving. I lost my Dad when I was only in my early 20s. I will be honest and say it didn't devastate me. We weren't close. I felt sad for my Mum, but only a passing sense of shock/sadness for myself. I still think about him with a vague sense of fondness, but no sadness at all.

However, I know that if DH dies before me I know it will totally devastate me, and that I will never fully recover, and that I will just be left enduring my left-over life.

"Weeping and wailing" is the norm in other cultures though - we don't tend to do it overtly because of our British reserve. Most people prefer to have privacy for their grieving.

It's a relief to read this thread and see so many others with undulating levels of grief for differing losses. When my only grandmother died I was sad but don't recall crying for her at all. (Although I find I do miss her now, and feel I would perhaps gel better with her now as an adult). When DSis's horse was pts I was utterly distraught, in an unable to stand up, gut wrenching sobbing kind of way. I can't explain it.

At the last funerals I've been to I've been more struck by the new social norm that seems to say that we all have to be terribly upbeat and jolly. Nothing wrong with celebrating a life if that's how people feel, but it does seem a bit harsh when people are almost apologetic for shedding a tear.

You sound normal. I was gutted when my dad died but he had been ill for months. Like you I would just let myself feel and take comfort that in years to come it would hurt less.

I'm the same with celebs too. Not much gets me if I aren't close to the person tbh. Although anything to do with ill children, vulnerable elderly or child abuse etc and I do tend to get quite upset.

I don't think I have ever cried about a famous person dying. I have cried at deaths in the news etc.

I lack empathy for old people. My mum died of cancer at 63 when I was 31. I am still quite bitter about it. I can't stand listening to people being upset about someone 'old'. I don't know exactly what my old cut off is, maybe early 70's+. I do know that isn't that old by the way! I really am not the person to talk to about your old granny having a bad hip. Well I suppose I probably am as I would always say supportive thing but inwardly willing you to shut the fuck up.

My 85 year old grandmother is having a hysterectomy tomorrow due to ovarian cancer. I love her and wish she didn't have to go through this, but there's a massive part of me who just thinks that's what happens when you get old. I don't go round telling everyone about my granny as to me it's not news, it's old age and natural.

I know I'm a complete bitch in this regard. I wasn't as bad before my mum got ill.

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?

YY! This is me too, (and tending to be a bit judgey and actually wanting to give people's head a little wobble...)

But I confess I cried at death of goldfish and mouse- but the mouse had been hand nursed for days with tiny microsdrips of antibiotics and massaged with skin cream, and the fish died because I did something wrong.

Everyone treats loss differently. Some cultures wail and scream, seeming to 'get it out of their system'. I feel some things run far too deep for tears, and we all deal differently with loss. Public displays of sobbing for celebrities that are not even known to the distraught wailer leave me cold - I suspect they are too, and just wanting to get five minutes on the TV - or do you think it's part of the culture of 'sharing' every personal emotion, problem, and life event?

You are not alone op. The whole Princess Diana outpouring left me deeply bemused.

i cry at the drop of a hat but cannot muster a tear for people I don't know. Yes it is sad that all those famous people died but they literally mean nothing me. Like you I cannot for the life of me fathom the awful collective outpouring of 'grief' that follows a celeb death

My mother says I'm hard emotionally as I do not cry an ounce!
My view is well, so and so isdead and no amount of crying is going to resurrect you so why cry?

As other people have said, grief gets us all in different ways and sometimes we can even be surprised by our own reactions. I had a cat for seventeen years and she meant the world to me. When she died I held it together in the outside world but came home and actually wailed. It felt as though I was more cut up about her death than I had been about my mother's. That said, I couldn't cry at first about my mother, but did go on to suffer three years of closed down grief and depression, along with other pretty negative and hard to deal with stuff due to issues we'd had while she was alive. I loved her, but ... as it were.

I don't have any immediate family now as father, mother and brother are all dead (in that order) and all died young or relatively young (my brother was only 33). In a way this had made me a good person to be around when it comes to being empathetic, but it also means that I'm less and less concerned about death and find it harder to "feel" it. (Probably because I've had two nearly dead experiences in the past decade as well). So, I get where you're coming from and I don't think you're cold at all. You just feel it differently and there's nothing wrong with that at all.

As an addendum, earlier this year when Bowie died I was in absolute bits. I cried on and off for about a week and was unable to eat for about three days. This took me completely by surprise and I have no idea why it hit me so hard. I still feel sad and I feel even sadder for his family, but my own reaction, even to me, was odd. But that's death, grief, sadness, blah,for you. It catches us in whatever way it will, and we just have to go with it.

I actually have thought in the past that it's pretty offensive when people come straight back into the office (one or two days) after one of their parents has died. My knee-jerk reaction is that it shows a lack of respect to the person who gave them life. However, I understand that people grieve in different ways so I try to remind myself of that.

I have never grieved for a celebrity. I've not even identified slightly with needing to grieve for a celebrity. But my pets and my family would be very different. I did 'weep and wail' when my cat passed away but he'd been one of my closest 'family members' since I was a teenager. We'd grown up together. Judge me if you want to but that was my grief so what could I do? I found it really hard to shut it off but it's a natural process and eventually the pain lessens. I dread the day that either of my parents pass away

I think as a nation we're not very comfortable with death and grief as a concept - it's very much Not For Discussion, and hence why we find other people's reactions so odd.

It really boils down to each persons reaction being a sum of their experiences and circumstances.
When my GF died my DM was incredibly busy looking after her mother, organising the funeral/wake, housing/care issues, overseas relatives etc etc., so didn't really cry or grieve for her father.
Her 1yo cat was run over a fortnight after and she fell to pieces. All the pressure was off by then, and she felt able to let it all out.

When I was 11 my cat was run over and I was distraught. This was because the cat was my only happy thing at the time, due to moving long distance/stepparent issues/school probs.

Largely I'm similar to OP and don't get too affected by public grief. However I feel very sad for children that lose their parents so cried for the princes, and find any children's deaths upsetting since having my own.

Companyofcats their return to work may be motivated by absence policy - three days compassionate leave is the norm.

I find it hard to feel sad when very old people die as that's a natural event, however, I have struggled terribly with some deaths in my family. I lost my maternal grandparents in my early 30's, they were such a huge part of my life and that loss was painful for a very long time. I miss my Mum terribly, she died far too young at 60, I was 34 and I think about her every day. That searing grief has long passed though although there have been times when it has revisited, for example when my son was born 5 years ago and when I went through my divorce as I really really needed her. Her sister, my lovely Aunt, died recently and that hit me really hard too. I feel like I have lost far too many of those who were close to me far too soon and feel very very sad about that.

On the other hand, my husband left me for a woman whose husband had been killed in an RTA very shortly before they started their affair and moved in with her and her little boy a few months later. That I have never understood and thought was beyond cruel to a child who had just lost his father .

I don't tend to cry much when people die. I lost my Mum a few weeks ago and haven't cried at all. However, I cry at just about everything else (though not celebrities). I have always explained it to myself by thinking that I don't cry at big stuff in case I can't stop, so I
let it out in little bits by crying at adverts and songs. What the truth of the matter is, I do not know.