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 cry. A lot. TV, adverts, others bad news...the only time it bothers me is when I feel it puts me in a 'weak' position.

Well known people - I don't often cry. But I sobbed, a lot, when Diana died, but not for me, for her boys. I just felt she was their champion, their link to reality, their protection from Royal Coldness. My heart broke for those wee boys.

Victoria Wood, I felt sad for her family, but also sad & angry with myself for never 'getting around' to seeing her on stage. I loved her, why didn't I do that?

Terry Wogan - I grew up with him & I miss his lovely voice chatting to me.

There are others too, whose presence I'll miss, but mostly it's the grief for their families.

Many, many others it's just a fleeting 'oh that's a shame for their families'

I never used to cry in public, but when my Dad died it was the straw that broke the camels back. I cried everywhere and totally stopped giving a damn what others thought.

My Aunty, who I was very close to, died when I was young & she was only 42. Then year on year I lost at least one close family member. Then friends & parents of friends I'd grown up with.

I cry when pets die, some more than others. A couple of them I'd had for over 10 years & at separate times they'd both really got me through some god awful times. I know some people don't 'get it' but it's pretty offensive to be so sneery - and no, it doesn't mean I was fortunate not to have lost humans.

As for the sneery post about hamsters, we will lose our little girl very soon, she's sick & highly unlikely to pull through. She's a sweet little thing who has been full of character since the day we got her, she's funny, she's cuddly, she's full of curiosity about the world around her and forever getting into scrapes. She complains if I don't go straight to her to pick her up...so yes, whether you think it's warranted or not, I will cry, I will feel awful and I will miss her.

Everyone's different with the way we handle these things. I've had losses that have knocked me sideways and losses that didn't bother me as much as I would have thought and frankly I can't see what makes them different in my head.

Bowie's death hit me very hard this year. Didn't do any of the public mourning but I did cry by myself to his music. Not sure if I should be embarrassed to admit that! I think if you connect strongly to someone's art it feels very personal because you sort of project your own feelings into them iyswim. I think there's also a lot of grief for people like Caroline Aherne because you see someone who really did have so much more to give.

I would never judge anyone for the way they mourn. So long as you're being healthy and thoughtful to others about it, I don't think it really matters what you feel or how you express it!

I am with you. I wouldn't cry for celebs. I do cry at sad things on telly involving kids tho! When my dad died it was very sudden & unexpected naturally I cried & was upset but not of the weeping & wailing kind. I knew I had to be strong for my mother & at the end of the day felt lucky to have him til 75 & he went the way he'd want to go. Also I had life to get on with DH n kids - harder for those who don't have that when a parent dies. But as you said tho I was sad at the time still do get 'waves' now and then I didn't wallow in it..

Companyofcats - the gear people would wear, I don't know, it would sort of depend on the deceased and also the immediate family. When my extremely Victorian grandad died, I remember being shocked as a mini-Mary Whitehouse, at age 11 that one of my brothers' wives wore red & white polka dots. To a funeral! Grandad would have hated that. But my friend's dad died at a ripe old age and one of her brothers got up & gave an affectionately funny eulogy.

The dickishness of my former employers vis a vis death: I called the office from the carehome (where I'd sped at lunch to see mum & support one of her grandkids who was falling to pieces). I explained that the nurses said mum would not last the afternoon & that I felt I should stay, partly to support my DN, & partly to be for mum (even if she probably did not recognise me). My supervisor squawked down the phone "But what will we do?!"

Sigh.

I feel exactly the same as you OP and I sometimes question whether I have some important part of my empathy/emotion bone missing.

It seems I am just much more pragmatic about loss than most people. I think it also helps that I am something of a lone wolf and very emotionally self reliant. Other people tend to lean on me rather than the other way around. I think that's maybe makes a difference. Some people are just not very emotionally robust.

Obviously I know it would be different with one's own child but with elderly relatives or for example cousins, friends or famous people I am sad and wistful but not devastated. I can only remember really weeping through genuine grief twice, once the day my good friend died and again at her funeral. But now, a few months later, I remember her with fondness and nostalgia rather than grief and devastation. I've lost close relatives and not cried like that. I think it was because it seemed like their time, whereas it didn't seem like hers.

I wonder if it's a sort of self-protection mechanism that kicks in, like a hedgehog rolling up. I am not a very sentimental or emotional person in general and I find the way lots of people grieve to be quite mawkish and attention seeking to be perfectly honest. I actually feel that my stiff upper lip works like armour, if that makes sense.

I cried when Freddie Mercury, Brian Redhead and Terry Pratchett died. These were people who were in my life every day, so I missed them.

I lost both my parents in my 20's..and although I felt broken and vulnerable for years, on the outside I was still happy go lucky. It's only now looking back that I realise.
Most friends showed little empathy, not having experienced loss, one friend has since lost her elderly dad, one whom she was never very close to, has literally wallowed in negative 'grief' for a year, to the point of not caring about anything else. It's as if she forgets that others have been there too. I cherish my parents memory and the wonderful relationships I had with each of them. In fact it made me feel better and stronger in myself, to know that was one thing that could never be taken from me.
I've also lost a baby through late miscarriage whom I held before saying goodbye, and three close friends in their 30,s and 40's and my grief was so profound. For them, their kids and our friendship.
Also cried when Diana died and Terry Wogan bless him.
My latest loss was our dear family cat, and the grief I experienced with that literally shocked me to the core. Really felt like our little family had been torn apart. The kids pain made it so much harder. Grief affects us in so many different ways, no matter who or what they are.

I have often felt like how you do op and questioned whether I was normal although I don't get crying and upset over celeb's.

I often think that I must be cold and unfeeling, when people who were in my life have died, mostly people in my childhood who I haven't seen for years and I didn't shed a tear.

My df died when I was quite young and I don't remember the grief but every year on his birthday I remember him (I dont actually have memories)and same for the day he died but I don't get upset. I do it because I know he was great dad who loved me.

I had a shock once when I was told a woman who I was close to had long since died and no one told me at the time, I cried once and moved straight on the next day.

I grieved more for my young cat for about a year when I'd only owned him for a few months and I would grieve the same for my current cat if it came to it I imagine.

Forgot to mention I do feel upset and empathy for natural disasters and terrorism, peoples lives devastated in an instant and mostly for any children involved.

So happy to know there are other "cold fish" out there!
I blame my family for it though, my mothers side, even including my grandparents, are believers that emotion of any type (Greif, anger, disappointment etc) is a private thing. And in times of family/friends passing we should always look at how we can offer practical help.

Mariposal, I no longer feel sad about terrorism, currently I am feeling well fed up & a bit angry. Just so fed up w the stupid pointlessness of it.

But cats are another kind of person (vs pet goldfish).

I've had my goldfish for twelve years and will cry when he goes. I also cried when my other fish died.

It sounds like you're just not a very sensitive person?

Yup, I'm a cold fish.

Could not help myself. Insensitive people are prone to making cruel jokes about deceased fish.

I get the impression you think this "quality" makes you superior somehow.

I have very seldom thought that someone else's grief was "mawkish" and "attention-seeking".
People grieve differently. I am pretty disconnected emotionally and can't cry in front of people, but I envy those who can openly express how they feel and reach out to others, or share their grief and feelings with others.
It seems healthy to me, rather than doing what I do and having panic attacks instead and crying privately at random shit for a couple of years because I can't unpick my own emotions about the big stuff.

Toast, I'm not sure that a stiff upper lip is a bad thing (necessarily). As you said, we all process grief differently. I think that for people who emote less in grief it's just an alternate way ... it's still going on, it's just the processing goes on on the back burner versus the front.

Cactus, you are being prickly. Cut it out.

Well I can understand mocking the death of a goldfish, (sorry, christmas cactus, sorry!) But you really don't 'feel sad' about young people caught up in terror attacks?

That makes me sad.

If you're going to talk judgementally about people who experience emotions and express them, make sure you can take it before you dish it out. A lot of the things you've said here have gone beyond "prickly".

I used to feel sad about terror attacks and of course I feel terrible for their families, but I'm just so fed up w the senseless loss of life that I'm angry about it now.

Dozens of people murdered and candles are lit and signs are carried and then it just happens again. I think I'm feeling like sad does not carry me very far. Just who do people think they are, to murder innocents? Makes me angry.

I cried my heart out when Willy Wonka died. But I'd had a shit day and a bottle of Rosé and I recognised even as I sat there ugly crying that I was being a bit of a twat. Generally I cope really well with death of real people / family because those around me need looking after. I would feel mildly sad if somebody famous died but forget about it very quickly. My week spot is when pets die. That stirs up all sorts of guilt and snivelling in me

A former friend who lost her dad cut off a lot of people, because in her mind, her grief should've come first and foremost regardless of other people's problems. I took the brunt of a lot of her anger - I was going through a frankly hellish time when it happened (my own grief for someone's death, active alcohol addiction, severe mental illness, harassment from my violent ex and his friends, social services involvement, I could go on), and she accused me of trivialising her dad's death.

I did nothing of the sort, I'd like to add, but I couldn't second guess what she wanted from me. I had nothing left to give, emotionally or physically, I was trying so hard to keep myself together and suddenly she'd rallied people to start having a go at me for being a cunt. Before her dad's death, everything had to centre around her and her whims anyway, but in grief it was magnified immensely.

I guess I'm trying to say that intense grief can be a destructive thing.

We all deal with bereavement in different ways. I was a bit tearful at the hospice when my DH was within weeks of dying. "Oh no, not another emotional one," I overheard just one nurse say. I felt that was a bit cruel under the circumstances - of course I was sodding emotional - I was soon to be widowed, what was I supposed to do? On the other hand a neighbour told me that I behaved with 'great dignity'.
I feel tearful about Bowie, Terry Wogan and Glenn Frey (strange mix, some would say) but not about others. I'm sure I'll be tearful when puss eventually passes. But there we are, 'in the midst of life we are in death' or something like that.

I'm very much like you I think because my dad died when I was 6 so when people are weeping and wailing about grandparents not seeing grand children grow up I am thinking we'll my dad didn't see us grow up. I get sad when a child dies or a young parent because that is out of the natural order of things. I think it's ok to be like this op we can't all go to pieces all the time over every death can we !

I'm like you OP, I don't get these public shows of grief when someone famous dies. Yes, it's OK to feel sad, I do myself, but to actually grieve is a bit OTT for me.

This reminds me of when I went to Blackpool the weekend after Diana's funeral. The landlord of our B&B started talking to us on our first morning and he was getting so emotional it was actually quite embarrassing. He was saying how he cried more watching Diana's funeral on the TV than he did when his own mother died . He then asked us if we'd seen it and when we said we hadn't, and that, although it was very sad that she had died so young and had left 2 young children behind, we'd never met her so didn't really feel any connection with her he got really angry with us. I honestly thought he was going to throw us out of the B&B . He started ranting about how there must be something wrong with us & how we should be ashamed of ourselves and that she was 'our' princess (we're Welsh and because she was the the Princess of Wales somehow that meant we should have grieved more deeply than the rest of the UK ).

Needless to say the rest of our stay there was pretty frosty. He gave us the silent /PA treatment every morning at breakfast and I seriously considered trying somewhere else. Luckily we were only there for 3 nights so we just decided to suck it up in the end

Dozens of people murdered and candles are lit and signs are carried and then it just happens again. I think I'm feeling like sad does not carry me very far. Just who do people think they are, to murder innocents? Makes me angry.
I'm with you there, OP: if lighting candles makes people feel better, then fair enough, but it's not actually going to make a difference to the chance of it happening again somewhere else.