Is It Possible to Grieve Someone We've Never Met?

I have spent a good part of my career exploring the intricacies of grief. In my book, Welcome to Wherever We Are, I write about navigating the grief of losing my father, a man who was both adoring and abusive. In scholarly journal articles, I have written about what I’ve called the grief of a teacher when working with students to understand issues such as domestic and sexual violence, health and illness, and death and dying. I have published essays on the grief of divorce. So, I have spent a lot of time thinking about grief that results from fissures in relationships and grief connected to losing people with whom we have been very intimate, with whom we have lived, and with whom the face-to-face encounters were everything and technology was less a part of the relationship.

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But recently, I have found myself wrestling with a different question:

Is it possible to grieve someone we’ve never met?

I have found myself asking this very question recently after the daughter-in-law of a friend I’ve only known for two and a half years online and through phone calls called to tell me she had died. I was stunned that the daughter-in-law even had my number; she told me that my friend had left information about people she wanted to be phoned when this happened. I had goosebumps. I thought: How had I made the list? We had never even met in person. I found myself feeling deeply honored and grateful that I was included in this special circle of people to be contacted.

I met Rebecca Winn in a most unusual way. We were each launching our first books and planning and canceling book tours at what would be the worst time in publishing history—mine in February and hers in March 2020. We first discovered each other because we both made the same roundup list of The Most Anticipated Memoirs of 2020. Our book covers even shared the same calming but playful colors: aquamarine, bright yellow, and white. We had each joined writers’ groups on Facebook and began to communicate via private messages. Then, we both wound up being interviewed on the very same day by book guru Zibby Owens for her podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books.

I arranged a call with Rebecca, and we wound up spending three hours together on the phone. And we did that again and again. She spoke with a bit of Texas twang that felt familiar since I currently live in the South and also lived in Texas years ago. On our calls, she was fiery yet vulnerable, she embodied elegance and grace, and yet she still swore: I liked her right away. She claimed to stay up later than usual whenever we talked, and regardless of the time she would get off the phone, she would venture outside and slip into her hot tub before crawling into bed. We hadn’t met, yet we knew some of each other’s habits and rituals.

We immediately expressed the desire to visit each other in person. While we will never get to do this, I am still able to spend time with her. Writing and other sorts of art-making leave something for survivors that is everlasting. It’s part of the beauty and meaning of these creative acts.

In fact, moments after I learned that Rebecca had died, I walked over to my bookcase and pulled her book off the shelf—One Hundred Daffodils: Finding Beauty, Grace, and Meaning When Things Fall Apart. And I sat with it to see what it might offer me in that moment, which is to say I sat with her. The book has remained next to my coffee mug every day as I write. When I am interested in listening to Rebecca’s voice and perspective, I open to any part of the book and can hear it. Sitting right beside me, it carries with it a gentle nudge to keep writing, carrying with it the reminder that if she could, she surely would, as her desire was to write another book.

We had each written a book about different forms of grief, the process of letting go, and giving birth to new versions of ourselves. And here I am, wondering how do you let go of a relationship that barely took flight?

Art-making and grief

One way in which we grieve people we have never met is when a celebrity dies whose talent may have moved and inspired us, and we have trouble imagining the world without their contributions. Most of us can name a musician, actor, artist, author, dancer, comedian, etc., who died and whose work affected us, helped us through a hard time, reminded us of someone we love, or otherwise nourished and sustained us. The idea that we cannot go to hear a beloved singer in concert again or will never hear new songs from that person can feel painful and like something important has been taken away. In these cases, the talent and the appreciation of the talent transcend any relationship; yet, a connection is still felt between musicians and listeners, actors and viewers, and authors and readers. It’s the art-making and the artful feelings that remain.

When celebrities die, we might also find ourselves mourning other versions of ourselves that feel lost or longing for a different time in our lives. For example, when Betty White died, I once again missed my dad, who had died nine years earlier. He loved her, and he loved The Golden Girls, so I was suddenly catapulted back to decades before in our family home with my dad in the den, eating pretzels or ice cream and laughing at the show. When Michael Jackson, Prince, and Whitney Houston died, it was as if my teenage years died with them.

There are people who are alive that we’re drawn to and have never met, but their presence reminds us of who we can still be. For example, years ago, I loved attending Championships on Ice, but I really only went to see one figure skater: Surya Bonaly. Bonaly was famed for her backflip, in which she lands on one foot, an illegal move in the long skating program. Though I never in my life attempted to even get on ice skates, Bonaly’s free-spirited ways resonated deeply with me. She defied conventional guidelines and risked the boldest, most daring jumps to be authentic. These qualities were important to witness at the early stages of my writing career and remain so when I think about composing my life. The point is that alive or dead, people we've never had the privilege to know can still influence who we are and what we might become.

Grieving someone we’ve never met is different; it’s strange. Loving someone we’ve never met is also different and strange. But in this increasingly global and technological world of ours, these experiences are more common and deserve our attention.