“There have just been so many deaths this year,” I said to my therapist earlier this week as she tried to break me down and understand the root of my paralyzing fear of Death.

“There are so many deaths every year,” she said, dismissing my statement. “It’s no different.”

Reflecting on the year, I’ve considered whether life seemed more intense because it was a leap year or because I was carefully documenting each day. The list of Celebrity Deaths seem more prevalent than ever, but are we just chronicling and socially mourning more than ever?

It’s strange to mourn the death of someone you’ve never met, someone who you don’t depend on for your everyday life yet we collectively feel a dagger in the heart every time we get the CNN Breaking News alerts on our phones. Another death. Who now?

Yes, the potential for more “entertainment” from the Celebrity is halted, but many of the deaths are of people who haven’t produced for many years. (At least David Bowie had the courtesy to leave us with one last album and Carrie Fisher was able to finish her Star Wars VIII scenes.) Yet our human tendency projects others’ dramas onto ourselves and somehow their deaths hold a mirror up to our own mortality.

Here is a comprehensive list of all 2016 Celebrity Deaths, but highlights include: 

David Bowie, 69

Alan Rickman, 69

Glenn Frey, 67

Garry Shandling, 66

Prince, 57

Muhammad Ali, 74

Elie Wiesel, 87

Garry Marshall, 81

Gene Wilder, 83

Leonard Cohen, 82

Florence Henderson, 82

Alan Thicke, 69

Zsa Zsa Gabor, 99

Carrie Fisher, 60

Debbie Reynolds, 84

The media’s coverage of famous deaths can have us believing this year is worse than ever, but the real statistics tell us it’s all status quo on the rate of dead celebrities.

The way we grieve as a culture – within our local communities – or on the Internet is different now. Because of the abundance of over-sharing in our culture, we inadvertently partake in a public pity party with the invisible connections on the other end of our phones and keyboards. I’m not sure if it makes our personal grief lighter, but somehow we’ve taken on celebrity grief as real, even though their lack of physical presence will not actually affect our daily lives.

We’re not even sad for the dead person, we’re sad for ourselves; what was taken FROM us. As if we were entitled to them anyway, as if they were a possession. When our bodies depart this earth, who we’ve been stays behind. The us we’ve sprinkled into our partners, children, friends; through our creations and our jobs and contributions to our communities. The mark we leave behind will last longer than the time we have here.

We are a piece of meat flying on a rock in the middle of the galaxy. It’s a miracle we don’t explode and burst into dust. We can’t worry about the little things and certainly, celebrity deaths should be the easiest for us to tolerate. Notorious figures live on indefinitely in their art and in the ripple effect they have on the population as their fans absorb pieces of them by osmosis. We can’t leave actual pieces of our bodies behind and possessions will deteriorate eventually, but we can leave behind stories. We can leave behind memories. We can leave behind lessons. Celebrities are just the lucky ones who die with an eager audience waiting for their eternal endowment.

Tagged: 365, 365 Day Project, 365 day writing project, 365 writing project, celebrity death, death, dying, famous deaths, grief, grieving, mourning, writing