Grief: Missing Someone You Never Knew

Grief is funny- there’s a ton of advice out there on how to get through it, how to cope, how to support people, how to be kind when you don’t understand, how doing the uncomfortable things can be better than doing nothing at all and risking making someone feel more alone. Heck, there’s advice out there for how to support someone who has lost a pet when you don’t like pets even a little bit. But there’s not much out there for grieving someone you never met.

I mean sure, there’s articles and such on why it’s easy to mourn a celebrity passing or a grandparent you never really knew. But what I’m talking about is deep, real, raw grief for someone loved by someone you love. Specifically, Fella’s deceased girlfriend. She was stunning. She was amazingly beautiful, smart, driven, silly. I love when he tells stories about her- in his words and the pictures online, she’s so vibrant and alive. She seems perfect. Obviously she wasn’t: no one is. And she had her share of struggles, ones that are hard for me to completely understand without being deeply sad. Sometimes I feel incredibly selfish because I didn’t get to know this amazing person who had such similar passions as mine academically. Who delighted in silliness, who loved her books and her makeup, two of my favorite things. Who parted her hair on the same side as mine in almost every picture and whose favorite color was pink, just like me. Sometimes I feel a very guilty anger that her research didn’t get finished, because it is so relevant to mine that I know I could build upon her legacy. Or I feel angry that she isn’t around for me to sort out my thoughts, to help me understand political philosophy because that’s the part of my research that confuses me the most, and she had the effortless ability to turn it into art. I feel a little lost sometimes because I can’t reach out to people who knew and loved her and get to know her more- it would seem so odd and potentially invasive, five years later, that this person they’ve never even met or heard of suddenly wants to infiltrate something so complicated and painful.

And then I feel incredibly sad for Fella, that he lost his beautiful person that meant the whole world to him. Honestly, it just doesn’t seem like I could ever come close. I didn’t know her, but I know from the stories and the pictures that she had more drive and decency and beauty to her than I believe myself capable of possessing. Her smile alone is incomparable to anyone else’s, like a movie star combined with a southern belle managed to possess the purest, kindest joy in the universe all at the same time. I’m different in many ways from her, and I am beautiful and decent in my own right. But the mark she’s left on the people who love her, the way they speak of her… my goodness and my outreach are not nearly as far. Maybe that’s something I should strive for, but that’s a tangent for another time. What I mean to say, specifically about her relationship to Fella, is that she was such a good fit for him. While he and I love each other dearly, I know that my fit to him isn’t as easy as hers. And that’s a hard feeling- as though somehow he isn’t getting the best life he could because he doesn’t have her. It makes me sad for him, and a little sad for me.

In conversation with all of these thoughts and emotions, I feel a gnawing in my gut, a kind of ugliness, because I don’t have a right to feel these things, do I? I didn’t lose her- Fella did. I don’t miss her hugs or the sound of her laugh- I never had those. Sometimes I desperately wish that I did. Fella did have those and so many other pieces of her. He shares her with me openly, not only his memories and thoughts but her books, her kitchen utensils, the tangible things to remind him of her. But ultimately all of those things, the psychological and the physical, are his to grieve. And I feel so rotten as a person, to feel such deep grief over someone I never even had rights to, rotten for somehow comparing myself to her, rotten for feeling so raw and selfish for myself that this vibrant, kind, elegant person wasn’t part of my circle. Like somehow I deserved to have her in my life and was robbed, even though that sounds unreasonable even as I type it. And finally there’s an overpowering feeling of helplessness that I couldn’t help someone that Fella loves so much. All of it feels like I have no right to it.

So what do I do with that? Who do I share it with and sort through it? There’s sometimes this urgent longing to learn as much about her as I can, to have as much access as possible and absorb everything there is to know about her. I am often too afraid to act upon that feeling, thinking it would be insensitive to those who truly lost her. I don’t want to seem weird or crazy or selfish, as though I’m grasping for a connection that I have no claim to. I want to preserve her legacy and memory. I want to make sure that this incredible human isn’t forgotten with every effort that I can make. I’m always afraid my intention will be viewed as something other than that.

At the end of the day, no matter how much I learn, or how many memories are shared with me, how much of her life, her imperfections or lack thereof, whatever, gets passed to me, it won’t bring her back. Maybe that’s all it is that I’m feeling… a desperate need for this woman to be back in the world, for the people who got to know her and the people who were robbed of that opportunity to have another chance at it. As far as I can tell, there’s no guidebook out there for how to navigate the jumbled mess I’ve just described. Maybe someone else will read this who feels all of these things and needed to know they aren’t alone. Maybe they will think to themselves their heart must be beautifully big and capable of deep compassion to grieve someone they never got to meet in this life. Maybe I’ve just lost half of my Twitter followers for sounding like a lunatic. I hope for the former. And I hope this is the beginning of doing my part to ensure that this woman is valued and remembered, somehow planting seeds in a vast garden that honors her life, her beauty, her work, and her goodness.

Her name was Erin, and she was a treasure.