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.
Thank you for this article. I too was deeply affected by this tragic event/murder. I didn’t follow him, however, I did see him occasionally on TV programs and actually admired that he was trying to engage open discussion among our youth. I reacted as well to Princess Diana’s tragic death. I also mourn that it seems like people cannot engage in open dialogue and actually listen to other people. You don’t have to agree with their opinions but the lack of respect of one’s opinion is horrifying. We need to respect each other. Let’s just put everything aside and focus, a young man is dead/murdered, a wife lost her husband and two very young children lost their loving father.
Thank you, Erin, for your thoughtful article! I, too, was deeply touched by Charlie Kirk’s horrific murder by a criminal lunatic. He was a loving husband and father to two young children. He was a son, brother, and friend to many. Apart from the personal side of his life, his organisation, Turning Point, was totally engaged in helping young people turn their lives around so that they had direction and meaning. He engaged young people in dialogue, demonstrating free speech and debate, as opposed to closed minds fixated on ideology. His murder demonstrates the difference between those who believe in God and loving others, and those who don’t. It has fuelled a revival of the Judaeo/Christian values that built Western Civilisation. Without these, we descend into chaos, as his murder demonstrated.
Whether political, religious, cultural, sexual-orientation, along with the innumerable varieties of values/ideolgies we embrace, our grief demonstrates the compassion and integrity of America/the World’s peoples.
“Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me…”
This exploration of parasocial relationships and how they flex our human emotions resonates with me. And, yes, I have grieved the death of a high school student I did not know and whose parents and family I did not know. What stunt he was up to and often known to be up to or why he was where he was and not where he should have been or any of the other wrong things he had done didn’t figure into that grief one iota. Loss is loss, and it’s completely appropriate for we humans to feel it deeply always. Whatever motives one might assign to others for feeling such is their own logic fallacy.
I felt very sad about the death of Princess Diana and very, very upset when Queen Elizabeth died. Both of them became part of our lives and in the case of Queen Elizabeth, formed some part of stability.