It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. But what if you never loved? What if you never actually met? There’s something unsettling about the commonly spoken phrase, “I’m sorry for your loss.” I mean, if it’s your father, mother, grandfather, friend, teacher, puppy, or even acquaintance…it is your loss. But for many lonely mourners, it’s the loss of a stranger.

The loss simply isn’t yours.

Our parents told us not to speak to strangers. Stay far away, don’t make eye contact, and certainly don’t go in their cars. But mourning their losses is an entirely different narrative. It’s one we never received instructions for—one we can’t control and don’t always know how to cope with. Sometimes the loss feels distant, and sometimes it feels just a little too close to home.

But that’s the thing about strangers—they’re not all that strange.

If you’ve ever found yourself inexplicably drawn to the suffering of others—unable to ignore the loss of someone you’ve never met or even heard of—you’re not alone. Grief is sneaky. Unpredictable. And sometimes, very confusing.

Especially when you’re mourning the loss of a stranger because a) you couldn’t have predicted this outcome, and b) no one talks about this type of grief.

So let’s break the silence.

For me,

it started with a Modern Love section column in The New York Times

In an essay entitled “You May Want to Marry My Husband,” a terminally ill cancer patient creates a dating profile for her partner of 26 years.

The profoundly beautiful words of the late author, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, left me craving more. More time, more words, more tears. But everyone knows that terminally ill cancer patients don’t get more of anything.

It began to feel like I genuinely knew her. But unlike the death of someone in my own circle, there was no funeral for me to attend. No friends or family to send my condolences to. No stories to share or memories to converse about. Just an obituary to read online.

But this distance didn’t make the grieving process any more bearable. If anything, it just made me feel alone. I couldn’t justify the agonizing pit in my stomach or the random bursts of tears that so unapologetically flowed without warning. I didn't want any of this. But no one ever wants grief.

I began to question if I was sympathizing with those who loved her or simply stealing their pain. And the blurred lines between compassion and theft perverted the legitimacy of my own emotions. I didn’t deserve to be upset. But I also couldn’t control it.

Eight Months Later

I was still refreshing that same Modern Love webpage to bring Amy back to life, even if only temporarily. Similar to the way in which a mourning daughter may search through old photos after the passing of her mother, I obsessed over the life that once existed.

I did everything I could to close the gap between us—reading her published children’s literature, searing her name on Google, and filling in any holes of unknown information.

But the information I found diluted what I considered to be a highly unique experience. It may have been personal, but it certainly was not unique.

I was just one out of four-and-a-half million online readers to take part in Amy’s journey. Doesn’t seem all that special anymore, does it? Well, it gets worse. Universal Studios spent over $1 million for the rights to the column, topping bids from Paramount, Sony, Netflix, and Studio 8. The intimate nature of Amy’s story was now being subjected to the flashy lights of Hollywood’s screens.

It seems rather voyeuristic that a terminally ill cancer patient’s final days would be at the center of a heated bidding war. The monetary potential in the suffering of strangers is an uncomfortable truth that must be grappled with.

Apparently, death sells.

Consider these movies that the world zeroed in on. The stories of these imagined characters and tragic plotlines provoke the same emotions as a funeral. But the lack of realism, and the distanced relationship between the actor and the viewer, fails to lessen the presence of sniffles and sobs.

We can become attached to strangers and grieve their losses even when we’ve only shared their stories through a screen. That’s what happened with Amy and me.

Perhaps the reason why we're able to attribute meaning to the loss of strangers is that we're all mortal. It's one of the few experiences universally shared by all living creatures.

Regardless of your age, race, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or anything in between, no one is immune from death. No one is invincible. And no one gets a free pass. So we look to others in mourning, or those on the brink of death, to learn more about a process that, eventually, we all will face. At one point or another, we will grieve the person we love most. We will grieve the losses of our friends, our families, and those who don’t quite fit into any set category.

But arguably the scariest part is knowing that we, too, will contribute to the cycle of grief for those around us. The unpredictability—the fact that our very existence can end at any given moment—is scary enough to shake us to our cores. Scary enough to drive this obsession and fascination with the deaths of those we don’t even know.

Death, in its many forms and with its many implications, is part of our DNA. We grieve the death of strangers not because we want to, but because we need to.

55.3 million people die each year

151,600 die every day

6,316 each hour

105 per minute

And just about 2 strangers die every second

When one of those numbers reflects the loss of a loved one, there’s no shortage of advice to turn to. With a quick Google search, you’ll find yourself drowning in a sea of self-help sagas, ranging from How to Survive the Loss of a Parent to The Grief Recovery Handbook for Pet Loss. But there’s certainly no book called “Surviving the Loss of a Stranger.” There are no instructions, rules or coping mechanisms.

But there is a world out there of others going through a nearly identical experience.

I know this because for the last four months, I’ve asked far too many people the same unsolicited question:

Have you ever grieved the loss of a stranger?

A remarkably similar set of responses unfolded—seconds of hesitation, followed by painstakingly squinted eyes, and then finally—the blurting of one specific name.

So I’m going to walk you through the stories of the many lonely mourners I’ve drilled, nagged, and questioned—to try to make sense of this phenomenon.

When we hear of a stranger’s passing, the first process that occurs is self-identification—a search for the ways in which the loss relates to your own life, or rather, the building of personal connections.

The Proximal Relationship can be formed through two routes:

1) Mutual friends

2) Shared backgrounds or eerily similar life experiences

The Proximal Relationship tends to be the most personal, and to be expected, the hardest to ignore.

When the loss feels close to home, and you know—or know of—people who were directly impacted, you extend yourself to share their pain. Even if you had never heard the name of the person who passed away, the suffering of others reels you in, leaving you with no other option but to feel it too.

When I read her death notice—just ten short days later—I found myself struck with surprise, debilitated by the loss of someone I had never met, and unable to continue moving forward. But how was I surprised when I knew she was going to die all along? I mean, she even gave me a fair warning— “I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet.” That’s the thing about Amy, she was always so honest—

or at least the Amy I had built in my mind was.

But there are far too many strangers in the world to grieve every individual loss. To put it into perspective...

In an attempt to dig deeper into this (not so) unique behavior—I interviewed a friend about her experience mourning the loss of a stranger. The boy she was grieving had been tragically murdered in a terrorist attack during his gap year preceding college.

It was not through mainstream news organizations that she had heard about this loss. Nor was it through Facebook posts, tweets, or Instagrams. But rather through the heartbreaking text from a boy who had just lost his best friend.

First Degree of The Proximal Relationship—Mutual Friendship.

The pain they endured permeated across seas, borders, and nations.

Struck with grief, debilitated by pain—my friend was unable to continue moving forward after hearing of his passing. Instead of attending classes that week, or taking her scheduled exams, she stayed in bed where she silently mourned the loss of someone she had never met, spoken to, or heard of.

Two years later, that pain is still provoked by scattered reminders on social media platforms. These personalized insights of mourning shared by those in the victim’s inner circle, trigger, what I call— second-hand grief. Similar to second-hand smoking, it’s not a choice she made, but rather a subconscious adoption of the emotional havoc of others.

The grief feels so real—so imminent—that she finds herself needing reminders that he was once just a stranger. And frankly, still is.

But this perceived closeness, or rather this illusion of closeness, becomes indistinguishable from the true relationship they once shared. Or didn’t share.

These relationships become inherently one-sided—nothing more than the emotions once exerted or the meaning attributed to their loss.

Keep in mind, it’s their loss, not yours.

But the shared friendships between her and the victim blur the lines of what belongs to who. Who gets to feel pain and who does not. Why it’s expected of one but not of the other. And whether or not society’s perception of grief accurately depicts the way in which we relate to those we do not know. Or those we come to think we do know.

In 2014, Max Steinberg, a 24-year-old Californian native who voluntarily enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was killed during Operation Protective Edge—a 51-day war between Israel and Hamas.

Max was a Lone Soldier—a term for those who serve in the IDF without any immediate relatives living in Israel. Following his passing, 30,000 individuals paid their respects at his funeral in Jerusalem. Most of those in attendance were complete strangers to Max and his family.

The former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren vocalized this personal connection he felt towards Max after hearing of his death— “I didn’t know him. But I feel like I know him. That was my path too.” Michael Oren was an American born citizen who also moved to Israel and served in the IDF. Max’s story resonated with Oren because they shared a common denominator.

They did not have mutual friends, nor had they ever met one another. But they certainly had shared interests, passions, and stories. The only difference was that Oren’s path continued after the army, whereas Max’s did not.

But Oren was just one of the 30,000 people who attended Max’s funeral. And Max was just one of the 64 Israeli soldiers killed during Operation Protective Edge. Even more specifically, Max was just one of the 13 soldiers in his unit killed on Sunday, July 20, 2014—the deadliest day of that summer.

But the funerals of the 12 other Golani Brigade soldiers whose lives were taken on the same night as Max’s failed to elicit the public outcry of 30,000 attendees. Or even a fraction of that amount.

The crowds of strangers honoring Max’s life stands in stark contrast to the personal gathering of friends and family at the funerals of his equivalents. The way in which the world zeroes in on one, but not the other—sheds light on a much larger phenomenon of the Selection Process.

But sometimes instead of grieving passively, we join in on the shared experiences of others.

But the representation of strangers extends well beyond the celebrity.

A stranger can be the person sitting next to you on the subway.

The man behind you in line to Starbucks.

The author of the book you’re reading.

Your best friend’s best friend.

Your cousin you've never actually met.

The stranger you’re one day going to marry.

Those strangers we once hid from have become our new topics of interest. Consider the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011. These names were essentially meaningless before the world zeroed in on their lives.

The celebrity gossip industry's $3 billion value reveals the extent to which we demand to feel like insiders - to be in the know and free ourselves from our outsider status. Social media allows us to learn about the lives of others without ever having to reveal our own identities or even interact in person. Personal connections become the offspring of publicized information.

As we grow older, whether we realize it or not, we begin to enter the impenetrable world of those we do not know. The emotional gap between strangers and ourselves, instilled in us by our parents, dissipates; in its place is born a newfound curiosity about those we don’t know.

The strangeness of strangers ends up being much more intimate than we originally thought,

or than the word itself allows it.

With nearly 2 strangers dying every second—it would be impossible to attribute meaning to every single loss. But when one loss is selected—chosen as a target for emotional release—masses of mourners are invited to cling to the loss of someone they have no personal relationship with.

Think about the loss of Amy Krouse Rosenthal—the late writer whose death received enough attention to be the focus of interest in a Hollywood bidding war. I was just one of four-and-a-half million online readers who stumbled upon her dying words and felt some sense of unanticipated grief. It was the volume of the masses that validated my own feelings, and simultaneously, opened my eyes to this commonly occurring phenomenon of grieving the loss of those we do not know.

But sharing this experience with four-and-a-half million others—coming to the realization that I was just a teeny part of a much larger equation—made me feel strikingly small. The transition from Me to We deterred from what I had considered being one of my most personal connections with anyone, let alone a stranger. I subconsciously built a resentment towards the actual number four-and-a-half million, as though it was a single entity I was competing with.

But with time, this anger dissipated. And my perception of this single entity transformed into a community of strangers I felt a part of, instead of competing with. If you’ve ever been to a large concert, you know what it feels like to be a minuscular part of a larger whole. You, along with the thousands of others in the crowd, feel as though you are having your own personal experience with the performer. But the performer has no idea who you are, or that you even attended his concert. All he sees or feels is the overwhelming presence of a crowd—a larger entity that makes you meaningless.

But your experience at the concert is just as much shaped by your connection with the crowd, as it is with the performer. You join in with those around you, creating a shared experience despite not knowing those you are sharing it with. Your movements become synchronized, and these strangers begin to seem less and less strange.

Like a crowd at a concert, I eventually found comfort in the community of strangers mourning Amy’s loss. In a certain sense, this community helped me move past my mourning and reach the Fifth Stage of Grief—Acceptance. I was finally able to move on once I knew that I wasn’t alone. And if you consider the purpose of a funeral, it is just as much to bring people together as it is to pay respect to the person who passed away. It is through these shared experiences that allow us to cope with death and continue moving forward.