Grief by Association: Dealing with a Loss that is Not Your Own

It is a strange thing to deal with the death of someone I know, but am not particularly close to. It can often feel as though I do not have the right to be sad - after all, I did not share their life with them, so why should I be allowed to share in mourning their death?
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.
Depressed teenage girl
Depressed teenage girl

Last Monday - a grey, cloudy afternoon. Over a thousand people stood together, eyes down, hands clasped, in total silence. The only sound was that of chiming bells, as the entire Cornell University community mourned the sudden and unexpected death of our new president, Elizabeth Garrett.

My roommate and I stood together at the back of the crowd, watching people react to the news with the compassion and care I have come to expect from this community. More than one person shed tears. As the chimes faded into the afternoon, I hugged my roommate and went to sort out my own emotions surrounding President Garrett's passing.

This is not the first time that I have found myself mourning someone I know only as another member of my community. When I was in middle school, a girl in my English class was tragically killed by a drunk driver. My sophomore year of college, one of my high school classmates passed away in a horrible plane crash, only a few weeks into his first year at Case Western University. Now, the president of my university - whom I'd met several times, and was always kind - is gone as well, and I am left wondering yet again the extent to which I am allowed to grieve.

It is a strange thing to deal with the death of someone I know, but am not particularly close to. It can often feel as though I do not have the right to be sad - after all, I did not share their life with them, so why should I be allowed to share in mourning their death? Every time this happens, I have to ask myself: how sad am I allowed to feel? Can I cry? Can I miss their presence?

The answer, of course, is yes. Death is a universal human experience, and the recognition that it happens to everyone, including people that you know, can be shocking. I remember my mother coming into my room to tell me that my classmate had passed away in a car crash, and the realization that someone who I was so used to seeing every single day - whom I had done group projects with, and studied with - was suddenly gone, never to return. It's a difficult concept to come to terms with, and every time that it happens, I must grapple once again with my own mortality. President Garrett's death in particular hit close to home - she is only a few years older than my own parents, and I suddenly felt the true flimsiness of the barrier between life and death. It is a scary reminder of how quickly a similar loss could happen to me.

To a certain extent, I am also mourning the loss of a possibility. When you lose someone you love, you know what you have lost. When you lose someone you are not particularly close to, you lose a 'what could have been'. Maybe I could have gotten closer to that person, had we had time. In President Garrett's case, I acutely feel the loss of all of the potential good she could have done for the Cornell community as our first female president. She was a role model for me and for many other women at Cornell, so her death is a particularly personal loss.

I have come to realize, however, is that while I may have a right to my own grief, I do not have a right to others' sadness. In other words, I cannot qualify my suffering as equal to or greater than that of those who were close to the deceased person. It is important in these cases that my own sadness does not outweigh my compassion and empathy for those who have lost a mother, father, child, or sibling. I must use my sadness as a way to understand the suffering of others, rather than as a way to bring attention to your own suffering. Ultimately, grief by association must be an unselfish sort of grief.

Only a week out from President Garrett's death, I still feel that pall that her passing has left over the campus. I also, however, have seen how life goes on. Students sat on the Arts Quad on Wednesday enjoying the sun, in the same spot where two days earlier we had gathered to remember President Garrett. Assignments were still due; tests were still taken. While we will never forget what we lost, the Cornell community will carry on - exponentially better for the brief time that President Garrett was with us.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot