When a Celebrity Unexpectedly Dies

People die every hour of every day but few of us pay attention unless we know them--or the person is a celebrity. Once a celebrity dies, the media storm begins. Depending on who it is, the coverage can range from no mentions of the passing at all, to the 30 second mention at the very end of a news broadcast, to coverage that lasts for just a few hours or drags on for years. Why do we care so much about the passing of people we've (probably) never met? It's because we feel like we know them. We've connected with them either through their music, their writing or their acting. We see their faces so often, maybe even more often than we see the faces of our relatives, that we develop a sense of friendship with them. They are in our homes on a regular basis, like a beloved friend that stops by for coffee. It's human nature to develop a sense of attachment to that which we see often, so it's understandable that people are so distraught or distressed when a celebrity dies.

Celebrity deaths can be broken down into three basic categories: the elderly celebrity death, the celebrity death after battling a serious illness, and the unexpected celebrity death, usually of young people. The three categories often intermingle, but not always.

When we hear or read that an elderly celebrity has died, we feel some sorrow, some relief for the end of their suffering and maybe a teeny bit of guilt for forgetting about them entirely until we see news of their death. The reaction to the passing of celebrities like Ed McMahon, Bea Arthur and Bob Hope are very emotional across generational boundaries. For the elderly person who has spent many decades with the elderly celebrities, news of their deaths is particularly poignant. They've just lost a coffee buddy (or war buddy!) who they have known since they were teenagers or young adults. And in a world where elderly people lose friends regularly, losing Ed McMahon could have a greater impact because here is one more of the circle of friends who has died.

The passing of a chronically ill celebrity, such as someone fighting cancer like Farrah Fawcett, is not a shock when it finally happens, but our reaction to it can take one of two paths. The first is if the chronically ill celebrity is also an elderly celebrity: we mourn but we are not surprised because, after all, we're talking about things like end stage cancer in 80 year olds. It's sad but not a shock, so it fades from the collective consciousness rather quickly. The second path this kind of death can take is if the chronically ill celebrity is a young person, like Farrah Fawcett who died on June 25, 2009 (though, at just three years shy of Medicare eligibility, calling her young is a bit of a stretch). There's a collective sense that they and we got gypped and our grief often overlaps with anger at feeling cheated out of time with them. But in the end, we move on and largely forget about them too.

The third category of celebrity deaths is the unexpected death. It's these deaths that hit us hard and stay in the media spotlight for months to years, if not decades. An unexpected death is "news!" Michael Jackson's unexpected death on June 25, 2009 shocked the world. Even though late night talk show hosts have long lampooned him and his various claims to illness, we had no solid knowledge that whatever he had was terminal or capable of causing a precipitous death. To the outside world, Michael was fine when he woke up to eat his Fruity Pebbles that morning but by about 2pm he was dead. I think the word we'll hear a lot about his death is "shocking" just like Anna Nicole Smith's death on February 8, 2007. You can still find shows about her death on TV today. Probably the most famous unexpected celebrity death was that of Diana, Princess of Wales who died in the tragic car crash on August 31, 1997. She had no known health problems so we had no reason to expect that she would die then. People passionately recall her and her death even now, almost 12 years later.

The unexpected celebrity death impacts us more than either of the other kinds of celebrity death because we had no reason to believe the person would die. These are the friends we see often and who looked great the last time we got together, so how could they just die like that? These deaths hang in the media for extended periods of time because of widespread speculation while waiting for autopsy and toxicology results. Show hosts relay the highlights of the person's career then rehash the mistakes and low points. We want to know every detail of their passing; we want to hear 911 calls, anonymous accounts from the celebrity's personal staff and the medical professionals, we want photos of the person on the ambulance or coroner's stretcher or of them going into the ER, any little bit of information we can have is a bit of information we demand. By knowing more, we feel a sense of resolution about our friend's death, and maybe even a reassurance that what happened to the celebrity can't happen to us.