Why We Grieve the Death of a Celebrity We Never Met

Dolly Parton’s death came as a surprise, at least to me, especially because just four days before, she’d told People magazine she still had a lot she wanted to do: “I still have so many things I want to achieve, so I’m gonna keep on working as long as I can to see everything come to life.”

I’m not a superfan. But I’ve always appreciated her — as a singer, as an actress, and as a genuinely generous person. So why has her death unsettled me? I don’t think I’m the only one asking. Why does the death of someone I never knew have any impact on me?

The Name for What You’re Feeling

Grief researchers call it disenfranchised grief — the grief you feel when someone dies that you didn’t really have a relationship with. The loss is real, even though other people might dismiss it.

The death of a public figure lands in that same category. You mention it lightly, if at all, and move the conversation along before anyone can point out that you never met the woman.

One-Sided, but Not Shallow

With a public figure, the relationship usually goes one way. But the connection you felt was real.

Maybe the relationship was you singing along with Dolly at a concert, one of thousands of unrecognizable faces in the crowd, begging Jolene not to take your man. Or you sitting in the theatre watching her in 9 to 5, humming “what a way to make a livin’” on the way home. She may “always love you”, but she sang it to everyone and no one — she never knew you were there. Still, you felt like you knew her, even just a little.

Psychologists call these parasocial bonds — the connections we build with people we know only through their work, their voice, a screen. Erin McQueen, a therapist who writes about grief after a public figure dies, puts it plainly: grief doesn’t care how close you were to the person. It responds to what they meant to you. A song that got you through a divorce mattered, whether or not the singer ever knew your name.

It happens with any celebrity — an actor, a singer, anyone you grew up alongside. When James Van Der Beek died in February at 48, after three years with colorectal cancer, among the people grieving him were the ones who came of age when “Dawson’s Creek” was on the air — kids in the late ’90s who are in their forties now. They didn’t know him. But he was on their television every week during the years they were figuring out who they were.

What Else It Reminds You Of

That’s why a celebrity’s death can sometimes affect you more than news about someone you see every week but don’t really know. And if you’re grieving Dolly, it’s because she was part of your life for a long time — her songs and movies woven through a favorite summer, your first apartment, your first love, the drive to a job you left years ago.

Often the grief isn’t only about the celebrity — it stirs up losses of your own. The loss might remind you of your grandmother, who would turn up the volume on the radio every time Kenny Rogers and Dolly came on singing “Islands in the Stream.” You think you’re crying about a stranger, but really you’re mourning the loss of your grandmother.

Some people barely notice a celebrity’s death. Others are moved by it — the ones who felt a kinship with Dolly, who saw their own lives in hers: the working-class kid who got out, the woman who built a life on her own terms, the believer who refused to judge. When she died, they lost the person who reflected that back to them.

Pay Tribute in Your Own Way

The day the news broke about Dolly’s death, millions of people played her music. Her songs were streamed more than 30 million times in the U.S., up from a million the day before — “Islands in the Stream” alone jumped from about 166,000 plays to over two million. Each fan listening one more time.

The tributes came fast. Jack White covered “Jolene” at a show in London the night she died. Within days, other artists were folding her songs into their own sets, and the Grand Ole Opry devoted a whole night to her music.

Most of the grief in this piece is the private kind — the sort you keep to yourself. This kind is different. It’s out in the open, shared, everywhere you look.

That sharing is part of what helps. Psychologists say that watching other people mourn in the open gives us permission to feel our own grief, and that we take comfort in knowing others feel the same thing. We bond over the same songs and movies while someone is alive, and when they die, grieving them together brings us closer.

So, if it helps, play the record over and over, sing the lyrics, watch her movies. You don’t need to have personally known someone for their loss to affect you.

Don’t talk yourself out of whatever you’re feeling. You’re allowed to miss her.

She wrote “I Will Always Love You” back in 1973 — not as a romantic ballad, but a goodbye to Porter Wagoner, the mentor she was leaving to go out on her own. He wept when she played it for him. Now it’s our turn.

Carrie Phelps-Campbell, Blog Contributor

Sometimes the death of a celebrity brings up an older grief of your own. Talking to someone can help. Our grief resources are a good place to start.