It was reported last week that progress had stalled on Lorde’s new album, because she was grieving. Not, as you might expect, for a close family member or friend, but for her dog. Pearl.
She adopted Pearl in 2018, and they reportedly spent every moment together. Discussing the loss, she wrote: ‘Everything was looking good. But one day we woke up and I knew, in that way mothers do, that he was sicker than we had realised, and that we were nearing a point where his body wasn’t going to be able to cope. I rushed him to the specialists. Pearl had two cardiac arrests about an hour apart, and after the second one, he died. I was holding him when he went, and I know he knew that I was there.’
Mixed in with the sympathetic responses to Lorde’s loss were the voices of those who found her raw misery unpalatable, because it was felt for a pet, not a person. But grief is a strange, complicated thing. It’s entirely possible to feel nothing when someone who you ‘should’ feel sad about dies, and a huge amount at the loss of someone strange.
In the summer of 2013, I remember feeling knocked sideways by the death of Cory Monteith, who played Finn in Glee. I hadn’t watched Glee for years, and I wasn’t any significant kind of fan of his. But something about the idea of him dying of a heroin overdose in a Canadian hotel room kept me awake at night.
Caroline is 31. She, like Lorde, lost her dog recently. ‘When I called into work I was sobbing so hard that they thought one of my children had died’ she says. ‘Initially they were sympathetic, but when I told them I needed to take two weeks off to grieve they were angry. I know they talked about it behind my back, and that they thought I was being dramatic. But Scooter [Caroline’s dog] was my connection to my life before my children. I’d had him longer than my husband or my kids, and he was the only living being who had ever been there for me. I had grief counselling after he died, partially to try and cope with his death but also to process the shame associated with being so devastated by his loss. People thought I was being stupid, so I felt stupid. I realise now that you don’t choose how you feel about death.’
When I called into work I was sobbing so hard that they thought one of my children had died.
The idea that you ‘shouldn’t’ feel a certain way about a loss is a common theme among people who have been devastated by deaths. ‘George Michael’s death ruined the Christmas period,’ says Coco, 28. ‘I found out just after I’d got back for Christmas, having spent the actual day at my boyfriend’s place. I couldn’t stop crying. My whole family told me I was being ridiculous, but I was racked with sadness. It was so hard thinking about how difficult his life had been. I just wanted him to find a long stretch of peace, but he went so young. I’ve lost friends and felt less.
‘In the end I went back to London early, before New Year. I just needed to be alone to grieve, without people thinking I was a freak.’
During the 2016 period when multiple beloved celebrities died, there was much debate about whether it was ‘appropriate’ to mourn for someone that you don’t know – something increasingly possible in the world of the internet.
‘When I was teenager I played a lot of online games,’ says Kate, 31. ‘I had a friend who I talked to quite regularly online who I felt close with. One day she just stopped logging on. Eventually it turned out that she had died in a car accident. I was shattered – I couldn’t go to her funeral because I didn’t even know her real name. I wanted to her tell her family about her online world, but I had no idea how to find them.
‘A year or so ago I was talking to a group of friends about the first time they had lost a loved one. I mentioned this story and they all agreed that it “wasn’t the same” because I hadn’t known her in real life. I felt so angry.’
The common theme with these women is that when they tried to discuss their grief publicly they were encouraged to stop, because the person (or animal) they were grieving for wasn’t the ‘right’ person.
You don’t need to reach a specific bar to be allowed to feel sad about a death. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, and your grief – whether it’s for someone you knew and loved in real life, a celebrity, an animal or someone you only spoke to through the internet – is valid.