When Grief Feels Silly: Mourning Someone You Never Knew
The news of Charlie Kirk’s tragic death hit me in an unexpected way. I was in shock and disbelief.
I didn’t know him. Not really. We never met, never shared a conversation, and yet I felt a wave of sadness I couldn’t quite explain.
It almost feels embarrassing to admit. I shared this feeling with a friend, who was feeling the exact same way.
It made me pause and reflect.
Why grieve someone who was never part of my life?
But the more I sat with it watching the world continue to live, the more I realized – this says something about the way we’re built as humans.
The Social Media Connection
Even without knowing Charlie Kirk personally, I knew of him. Through posts, interviews, and endless scrolling, his face and voice became familiar. Social media has this funny way of weaving strangers into the fabric of our daily lives. You watch, you listen, and before you know it, there’s a thread of connection.
It’s not friendship. It’s not family.
But it’s something.
Why It Lingers
Sometimes I wonder: am I grieving him, or am I grieving the story I saw on the news? Am I simply mirroring what I picked up from others?
Or is it more about the reminder that life is fragile – that one day someone is here, and the next they’re not?
Grief doesn’t always make sense. It doesn’t ask if you were close enough, or if you’re “allowed” to feel it.
It just shows up when something in us resonates with the loss.
Wired for Connection
Humans are wired to connect. From the very beginning, survival meant being part of a tribe. That instinct hasn’t left us. Even today, our brains light up when we see familiar faces, hear familiar voices, or follow someone’s story.
So, when someone we’ve “known” through a screen disappears, it’s no wonder it stirs something inside us.
Familiarity feels like connection, and connection makes loss sting, even if it’s only one-sided. And maybe it also hits harder because our lives today are more scattered.
Families don’t always live close. Neighborhoods aren’t as tight-knit as they used to be.
So, when a public figure dies, it feels like a shared moment – a rare time when strangers all feel the same thing together.
Sometimes, though, I think it’s not just about the person who passed.
It’s about what they represented – a certain season of life, a perspective, or just the reminder that none of us are here forever.
Their absence pushes us to look at our own lives a little closer.
The Quiet Lesson
In the end, maybe the sadness isn’t silly at all.
Maybe it’s just proof that connection – any kind, big or small, near or far – matters. It’s a reminder that we’re part of a bigger human story, always overlapping with others.
And instead of brushing the feeling away, maybe I can let it nudge me to do the obvious but easy-to-forget thing: reach out to the people I do know and love.
Because connection is what keeps us steady, and it shouldn’t take a tragedy to remind us how much we need it.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Have you grieved the death of a person you never met or knew personally? Have you reflected on why that happens? Please share your thoughts and let’s have a conversation.
There is one reply commenting that Charlie Kirk was a controversial character. NO – he was a Christian who openly shared his belief and lost his young life the same as Christ was crucified in his early 30’s. I was saddened by his senseless death – but it only amplified the gift of belief in God and consequently, the beauty of the family structure that the whole world sorely needs.
The word “controversial” is defined as something that arouses a difference of opinion. It’s fitting in this instance.
when someone who had the faith of Charlie, the determination of Charlie and the honesty of Charlie, if you are a good person you mourn! he was not a hater – he tried to spready peace and opening up a dialogue, he did not put you down – Charlie merely told you his side and hoped that you would look at it! he was a college age once and wasnt that far away from being 20, 21. Charlie was just trying to open young peoples minds to think of consequences of your actions bc sometimes at a later date we regret them! God Bless him and his family
I am very sad and distressed that Robert Redford died. He was a big part of my youth.
Please let us not politicize one of the last places we can go to escape the relentless horror of what’s going on around us in the US. I’m asking the moderators to keep articles free of political content. Thanks.
It’s only political if you see everything through that lens. Here was a young, upstanding family man who treated everyone with respect. He was a decent human being first, and if you can’t look at the tragedy of his death that way, then you have some problems with human decency.
Agree.
I agree with you Lisa
Above all he was a decent human being that didn’t deserve to die like that.
I think we should all be able to speak our minds freely in this world and if people disagree they disagree but if we are mindful and speak in decent language as he did then hopefully we’ll offend only a few.
OK, I’ll speak freely, then: The author is an expert on Tiny Houses—not an expert on grief—wouldn’t it be so much better to hear all about her expertise on tiny houses? I’ll bet she knows a lot of interesting things about that.
But since she stretched far outside her expertise to write about her reactions to the murder of Charlie Kirk: NO one deserves to die like that. Not the legislators in Minnesota who were murdered in their own homes by a right-wing nut, that the right-wing commentators on Joe Rogan said was a “good thing after all,” and not Charlie Kirk. It was a terrible, terrible act: cold blooded murder. Deplorable. Yet Kirk was a man who said openly that if his 13-year-old daughter became pregnant by a rapist she should be forced to carry that child to term. That is a brutal patriarch, not a decent or compassionate human father. He also made a snarky remark at the brutal beating of Nancy Pelosi’s 82 year old husband by a MAGA nutcase.(As did the current occupant of the Vice Presidency, who laughed about it—yes, I saw it on Fox News, because I am not a member of any political party and watch/read a wide range.) So I cannot “grieve” for the loss of such brutal ideas or influence in the public sphere, even as I think it was a horrible premeditated murder that should have never happened to anyone.
If the topic is not Kirk, but rather, grieving for strangers, as people keep trying to assert, it would behoove one to learn the truth, not the MAGA fanfiction, of what one’s grieving for. That would be true of all celebrities who die: people you may grieve, but whose lives or characters contain un-grievable elements: perhaps a more interesting/nuanced spin on the topic. But this author is not a cognitive dissonance expert either.
Face it, bringing up Kirk’s name in this essay was deliberately political. Not good. If the editors politicize this site by including overtly political content like this, you cannot expect people not to respond, and it’s going to get a whole lot less pleasant. (I’m leaving the site today for this reason, as several others I know on here have told me they are, from both sides of the aisle, plus two like me, independents; who knows how many others who just wanted a nice space to be free from it all for a few minutes in the morning.)
Why would the editors allow such content to enter such a sweet little site? All they had to do if they really wanted to explore the topic of grieving for strangers was to get an actual expert on grief to write it. Plenty of PhDs on that topic could write it better, without the inflammatory faux-pretext.
The articles on this lovely site cover many different topics including Grief!
Charlie Kirk just like Lady Diana were both killed in the prime of their lives. Both deaths have resulted in a massive out pouring of emotion from all around the world. Forget politics for a minute…Why wouldn’t Charlie Kirk be mentioned in this article?
This is the real world here so I’m sure the followers of this site can understand this.
Please don’t compare Kirk to Lady Diana.
I’m sorry you feel that way, Liz. This is a personal reflection story, as you are aware we publish all the time, and those don’t require a PhD as feelings are common to all human beings.
It would have been productive to simply reflect together; nothing else.
Wishing you all the best.
I would ask that articles be free of religious content, too. Thanks.
Thank you for commenting, Janet. Why not? Every author writes from their own point of view, and beliefs are part of who we are. No need to be offended by someone else’s beliefs. If they’re not your own, just ignore them.
Dear Liz,
Thank you for commenting. This was not meant to be a political article. It was an article about grief and connection in grief. That is it. Let’s not put our own political views where they don’t belong.
Exactly!
I’m sad for everyone involved, directly and indirectly, in yet another avoidable tragedy in society. Like the spokes of a wheel, the harmful repercussions are unfortunate and massive.