To ask if you have ever grieved for someone who’s passed away who you have never met?

[Acapulco12]

It seems strange, I know. I don’t think this has ever happened to me before, but at the moment, I think I’m feeling all the usual stages of ‘grief’ for someone whose death I read about in the news and who I’ve never met. It’s very strange and unexpected. I just wondered if anyone else has ever had anything like that.

Thanks murasaki - I think it’s absolutely possible that the feeling I’m identifying as ‘grief’ is a mix of anger and sadness. I’m sure it is that, in fact.

I think it comes from a feeling of powerlessness at what we can do to stop people from Navalny from dying entirely preventable deaths.

Yes, of course we can donate time and money to causes who support political prisoners and countries who are at war and we can put pressure on our government to act (and I think it’s so important to do this if we can). However, ultimately, Putin - and other politicians like him - will continue killing and torturing people with complete impunity. It is completely immoral and disgusting.

@Acapulco12 thank you. It took 5 days for him to be found and it was very distressing. And this time of year, so...

I think it's the personal connection that leads to grief.

I agree with many others that it can affect you hard. And what one chooses to label, grief, may not be precisely what another would call it.

I feel fury about Navalgy, and that's as much about the state of the world he leaves, and what he wanted to achieve but didn't.

I've felt profound sadness at the loss of public figures, George Michael being the pinnacle for me.

None of those affected me the same as losing parents though, which was an all-encompassing and overwhelming physical and mental pain.

I don't, most importantly, feel we need to label it as grief or not. Someone will always be along to argue over the word choice. If you're sad, that's okay. Nobody needs to justify that.

I agree entirely with this. It's different to personal grief but does affect us.

🌺🌺❤️ I’m so sorry. That is gut wrenching. I can only imagine how horrific that must be. I’m really sorry.

You had a direct relationship with them over 15 years though. I think it was a friendship, different in nature to someone you met in person but still a friendship none-the-less.

Victoria Wood. For two or three weeks I woke up feeling sad and then remembered why,

I came pretty close to it when Steve Wright died.

Cried my eyes out when Freddie Mercury died. I've been a Queen fan all my life
Certain Queen songs still being tears to my eyes

I was sad to hear about Ray Stevenson recently too. I loved him.
It's really sad about Dave Myers. I thought as he was returning to tv that he was recovering

Yes, dave myers this morning. Probably more so because I have cancer too but he seemed such a decent man which is a rarity and I found his and Si’s programmes very comforting to watch.
Have watched some today to see him again.
Agree Navalny’s death was horrible and sad too.
The queen’s death was a sort of shock but she had a long and good life so a different feeling.

I cried when I found out she died, even though I’m an American. I think to me it represented the death of that whole generation who were adults during WWII and valued duty and sacrifice. Plus, there was something reassuring about how calmly she handled everything (in public, anyway). No matter what craziness was happening, she always seemed like “the adult in the room.”

The majority of the world went into mourning when Diana died. The U.K. was irrevocable and changed by her death with the outpouring of grief, my family included.

Some famous people passing have been a shock and I've seen saddened. David Bowie being one.

The one that really got me was Chester Bennington (Linkon Park), who committed suicide.

Linkon Park music was a major part of survival for me when I finally took the children and fled the ex.

A man whose voice helped so many with his lyrics couldn't find the help he needed for his own pain

I’m from Manchester and I experienced a kind of grief after the arena bombing. I read everything I could read about the victims, cried a lot, laid flowers and poems. I wasn’t alone in that, lots of people I know were the same. It was so close to home. But it wasn’t the same as losing a loved one.

@Blackcats7 I am so sorry 🌺

I actually did.

I think it was related to losing my partner the year before though as it was someone we had both seen live and it brought back many memories of my partner.

They had the same problems with alcohol, shared the same love of poetic words and music. I broke down all over again and couldn't stop thinking about either of them. It became a bit exhausting. Thankfully it ebbed away over a few months.
I still feel that pain whenever I think of this person though.

Yes the Queen. The only person I’ve never met in person where I have genuinely been very upset at their passing. I guess as a nation we all felt we knew her as she was a constant figure. I still feel sadness that she’s gone.
Some celebrities I’ve felt sad on hearing if they’ve passed away, but I wouldn’t describe it as grief.

Really?!

Alan Rickman
Rik Mayall
Harold Ramis
Freddie Murcury
John Lennon

Thanks nadine90 🌺 the bombing was horrific. I can imagine that must have affected you a lot as you’re from Manchester.

I feel like I’m doing something similar to what you did - although I have no particular link to Navalny and am not Russian or anything - as I am reading up about him and about Russia. I think this is a way of trying to process what has happened to Navalny and others like him and to try and make sense of what Putin did to him, even though that is of course something that we will never be able to understand or make sense of.

It’s sort of like I’m trying to educate myself about Russia and what is driving Putin to do what he is doing. I will never understand it (firstly because Russia has such a long, complex and rich history and secondly because Putin is being utterly irrational).

Navalny’s courage is something I have actually also taken enormous comfort from. This sounds horribly trite and self-centred, because it is, but the courage and humour that he chose to live by, even whilst in the most atrocious conditions imaginable, have helped me enormously to give a sense of much-needed perspective to my own life.

I read your thread title and immediately thought of Navalny.
When the radio station I was listening to announced "breaking news" about Alexei Navalny, I held my breath as I thought he was being released. When they said he'd died I actually shouted "nooooo" like in one of those film scenes. It was like a punch in the guts.
I'm amazed at Yulia Navalnaya's courage. How can she be so strong so soon after losing him?

I’ve felt sadness and shed some tears, today when Dave Myers death was announced most recently. But nothing approaching the grief of loss of a loved one

The grief some people feel at the death of a pet is often comparable to the death of a close family member, because that's what they are.

Yes George Michael. He was my first love. I really cried when he died.

Yes, I experienced something approaching grief when a two year old called Margot Martini died several years ago of leukaemia.

I saw her story on social media- her family were trying to find a stem cell donor and her father ran an active campaign. They were unsuccessful and she died but I was so moved I volunteered to help them at an awareness day in London for stem cell research and signed up as a donor.

She was almost exactly the same age as my son - I think that was the connection.

Yes.