Celebrity Deaths Experiencing True Heartbreak

Celebrity Deaths: By: Sarah Vandermolen Sports Editor Experiencing True Heartbreak

As the year comes to an end, we tend to look back at everything that’s happened to us over the past 365 days. We marvel at what we’ve accomplished. We’re still a little bit irritated at what we missed out on. We tear up thinking about all that we’ve lost. Whether it be a father, a friend or our favorite star, it still brings a pang of sadness to our hearts.

This unspoken phenomena of mourning lost stars like they were our own loved ones has left me pondering. Why do we feel genuine grief over losing someone we never met? We’re moved to tears, sometimes even heartbreak, over a person we never really knew. Is it because we’re humans and we can’t help but be sad when someone dies? Or is it something more?

One of the reasons these deaths hit us so hard is because we’ve built this parasocial relationship between ourselves and the star of our choosing. According to www.findapsychologist.org, a parasocial relationship is a “one-sided relationship, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other party, the persona, is completely unaware of the other's existence.”

When a celebrity we adore dies, we feel like we’ve lost a loved one and in some ways, we have. We’ve given so much of ourselves to them, time, attention or love, that when they pass, we don’t know what to do with this hole that they’ve left behind. It’s hard to grasp that they’re really gone, especially because you can’t just call them up and ask if it’s all a joke.

“Another factor is that our relationships with celebrities don’t necessarily follow typically understood measures of time and space. They seem immortal to us,” explains Mumbai-based psychologist and psychotherapist, Hvovi Bhagwagar, in an interview with Vice. It’s hard to base their passing in reality, especially since we’ve never met them.

In a way, though they’re just a person that lives in their own world, a version of them, the idolized being, lives in your world. In your world, they feel untouchable, sometimes almost godly. They serve as a role model, inspiration, a friend, an extended piece of ourselves.

“The celebrity’s passing away also makes us question our own reason for living. It makes us ask where we ourselves are headed and whether we will reach our goals before we pass away ourselves—and that starts creating anxiety in us,” states Bhagwagar.

Some people may find it odd, silly even, that someone would mourn for a celebrity that didn’t even know they existed. This can make us and our grief feel invalid but that’s not the case. According to www.rd.com, “We’re often brought up to compartmentalize sadness and feel that we should mourn in a certain way, but grief is different for everyone.” Just because we’re more upset over a passing than someone else, doesn’t make one person more right. We’re all allowed to feel however we want about whatever we want.

If we felt that this star was a big part of our lives, it makes more than enough sense to feel completely distraught by their death. University of St. Francis senior, Valerie Reyes, explains how she’d feel if a star that she loved passed: “If Harry Styles passed, I would feel absolutely devastated. His impact on the music industry has been massive and I would be so happy to have been able to experience his success and all that he’s done. However, it would still feel like a piece of me has died.”

Like the passing of any loved one, we should take the time to live in our grief. We can mourn who and what we lost and find a way to live without them while always loving them. It’s hard but it’s possible. To move forward, we have to leave something behind, whether we like it or not. Just be happy you got to know them, even if it was only in your world.