Ask Auntie Trash: Dealing with celebrity deaths

Dear Trash,

I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but the recent death of Prince has really upset me. I grew up listening to his music and it got me through the good times, the bad times and everything in between.

The thing is, I didn’t expect to be so moved by his death; I only liked his music, I never met him, I never even saw him live. I normally pride myself on not buying into our celebrity obsessed culture, but I just can’t shake this grief, or the feeling that I’m being a bit daft for feeling so sad. 

Please help.

Yours,

Violet the Organ Grinder

Hi Violet (TOG),

Grief’s a funny thing, isn’t it? And by funny, I mean, it’s like someone kicking you in the chest so hard that you fall backwards into a giant pit, only for them to kick you in the stomach once you clamber out of the earth, soiled, spluttering and spent. 

But here’s the thing: we all grieve, we just don’t know how to deal with it. This is because grief is complicated: it’s messy, it’s long; it's tedious and it hurts. Bereavement is made even more difficult when you factor in the social conditioning of our Western society. We don’t like to talk about death, we don’t like to grieve openly, it’s unbecoming, it’s ugly, it’s just not cricket, old bean.

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And that’s just when you’ve actually known the person that you’ve lost. Mention you feel a bit sad about a celebrity passing and you get a bunch of weird looks, maybe a bit of laughter and a couple of comments about you not knowing that person. However, you need to know that your grief is no less important because you never met His Royal Badness and here’s why:

As you said, you listened to his music growing up, you reached for his work when nothing else would do. Whenever you needed reassurance, comfort, or just wanted to get down with your bad self, boom, all you had to do was grab one of his many, many albums and push play. He had your back, he was there.

What you’re experiencing right now is totally natural; the person that created the music that shaped your youth, the songs that made you, the lyrics that stitched your shattered heart back together when it was broken, has died. You might feel shocked, maybe a little lost, or perhaps bewildered, but this is OK, and you will be OK.

You are not just mourning the loss of Prince the person, you are grieving because during those dark times, and during the good times when you just wanted to dance to Kiss, or my personal favourite track Hot Thing, you developed a connection with the music, and in some way to His Purple Majesty. He is gone, but your connection remains here, on Earth, with his music.

So, don’t feel ashamed or embarrassed about how you feel; be true to yourself. If you feel sad, accept it, and grab the Parade album. If you feel angry, then go somewhere quiet and scream and find some of his sexiest tunes and just dance. And if someone makes fun of you, then that is their problem; it doesn’t make your grief any less real, it means that they’re not a nice person.

Just remember that you are not alone – look at all the headlines, all the stories, remember all the buildings around the world that suddenly turned purple, and stood tall, and glorious and oh-so-fucking extravagant when he passed. You are not daft, and will get past this. You will get the funk up once again.

Yours in purple,

Trash 

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Do you have a theatrical problem you'd like help solving? Email trash@theskinny.co.uk