In the last year or so, as icon after icon has dropped dead, it has been impossible to avoid two distinct feelings: 1) deep, abiding grief, and 2) a tiny bit of shame for feeling such deep, abiding grief. After all, you didn't actually know these people, right? What, were you and Prince in a bowling league together? Were you on some great group text chain with Leonard Cohen? How absurd to shed tears for people you never even met in person! As some clown on my Facebook feed said recently: Enough with the mourning over famous people! If that's the worst thing in your life, I bet some kid with leukemia would love to trade lives with you! Why not find a real problem and then talk to me later!
As though human emotion were a privilege you need to earn your way into. What nonsense. But if only victims of hardship get to decide who feels which way about what, then pay attention: My dad died a month ago, and I hereby grant you permission to cry as much as you need to about Mary Tyler Moore.
Here's the thing: No, of course you didn't actually know any of the giants who left the earth in this last year. They didn't know you. But your relationship was every bit as important and maybe even more intimate: They gave you art that helped you get to know yourself. Maybe George Michael taught you there was power in exuberance, and value in joyful pop music. Maybe David Bowie moved you to think of gender as something non-binary. Maybe Carrie Fisher showed you that a princess didn't have to be helpless. (Or maybe she just instilled in you a lifelong love of science fiction, which is reason enough to mourn her as you would an old friend.) They made something that was bigger than them, something that connected with you, a perfect stranger a world away. That's magical. That's worthy of respect.
It was the art you interacted with, not the person, but death comes for them both. It's perfectly appropriate to grieve over the fact that we won't get to see Anton Yelchin grow up, or find out if Garry Shandling had more story for Larry Sanders. We'll always have Dirty Mind, but we'll never know what kind of Sex Gandalf an older Prince might have become, and we will be poorer for it. Art is immortal, but artists aren't, and that's startling news every time.
Another important thing to remember is that it's actually probably better that you didn't know these people personally. It's a cliche that one should never meet one's heroes, but cliches are cliches for a reason. Actual human beings are awkward, or shy, or wracked with self-doubt; artists are usually all three. Like bears in the zoo, they are as afraid of you as you are of them. A face-to-face meeting is therefore doomed to be disappointing, and that's as it should be. People will let you down. "Careless Whisper" never will.
You weren't friends, and that's the point. You spent time with their art, their art shaped your life, and now they're gone. It's not for anyone else to tell you how significant that should be, or how you should react to their deaths. Tell the Grief Police to get lost, and feel all of your feelings. You'll drive yourself crazy if you don't, or worse: You'll just get dull.
