Celebrities, Friends & Grief Rituals : Grieving Matthew Perry
What Matthew Perry's death can teach us about grieving well
I remember where I was when I heard the news. I was at home texting with my partner. They shared with me a link to the breaking story. Matthew Perry, 54 year old advocate, actor and author, had passed away at his home.
Unexpectedly, I found myself in shock. I watched a lot of videos of his best clips, read some wonderful tributes, and paid my own.
Then I broke down and cried.
More than once, for over a week.
Ever since the news came out, I’ve been watching Friends, The Odd Couple, and lots of interviews with Matthew about his memoir, published in 2022. I’ve cried, laughed, but most of all, I’ve lamented a life snatched away so young, and a man who cared deeply about people and helped so many addicts just by sharing his story. A man who’d done so much work to heal himself and get free, taken just when his life was getting started.
I’m still missing him now. Even as I write this, weeks later, when he’s been laid to rest, it still sinking in that he’s gone. I know I’m not alone in this feeling either.
But why all this for someone, a celebrity, who I never met in person, and didn’t have an in person friendship with?
Well I guess that’s kind of the point. For many of us, Matthew Perry wasn’t a celebrity, he was a friend. One we didn’t even know personally, but because of the power of good television, we had a relationship and strong emotional bond with.
Many of us have what a called “parasocial” relationships with specific celebrities. Parasocial relationships are one sided relationships, in this case with actors, musicians, authors, directors or other celebrities who have meant a lot to us. The ones who inspire us, who make us laugh, who we have a strong connection to not just in relation to their work, but to them and their story. To the extent we feel we know them.
I watched Friends for the 10 years it was on, and often since, and followed the careers of the actors in the show. So you could say, I’ve had a “relationship” or “emotional bond” of some kind with Matthew Perry (and his character, Chandler Bing), for nearly 30 years, and many others have too. Indeed may fans laid floral tributes to Perry at the ‘Friends building’ in New York (see below). Many of us certainly had a parasocial relationship with Matthew Perry, most through friends, but many others through his advocacy for addicts - some even both.
Celebrity deaths can have a profound impact on us because of these parasocial relationships, but I believe there’s more to it than this. I remember when Princess Diana tragically died in 1997, and I’ve never seen a wave of grief take over a whole nation as I did then, almost disproportionate to the loss we’d experienced and any para-social relationship. When Chadwick Boseman suddenly passed away several years ago, I felt it deep in my body, and I had to take time to grieve, and many many people felt his loss deeply.
My growing theory about celebrity deaths, is they give many of us permission to express all our internal grief.
In a culture which encourages us not to take time to process our emotions, celebrity deaths give us a rare, culturally-sanctioned opportunity to exhale all our internalised, unexpressed grief.
At the time Matthew Perry died, many of us were angry and grieving the situation in the middle east, which continues to this day and is rightly angering many of us. Many innocent people were and are being killed every single day, a tragedy which is rightly grieving us all. Social media was, at the time of Perry’s death, becoming full of people who clearly hadn’t learned to process grief, had no way of processing the grief which was happening every day, and it was starting to come out in hateful, harmful ways.
But in the first week following Perry’s death, I noticed a tangible change in this, to a degree. The anger was still there, but the hateful edge was, for at least week or so, less than it had been.
All over social media, people were mourning Matthew Perry and freely giving voice to their grief. Videos, clips, montages, tributes to his life, being shared by almost everyone.
What I began to realise over that week, is these are all modern forms of grief rituals, especially for famous people we have a strong connection to.
People posting videos.
People reliving memories.
People writing out their feelings.
People talking about what he meant to them.
Publicly and privately.
These are a form of grief ritual..
I’ve written several tribute posts myself. I’ve read tributes from his friends, co-stars and many others who knew him. I’ve watched a lot of the shows he was in and laughed out loud at them, with a tear in my eye. I’ve watched interviews with him bravely sharing his story and his desire to help others. Now I’m writing this piece about him.
I know many others have done a combination of the same. It’s one of the biggest online expressions of grief I’ve seen by my generation, and all the generations after mine.
We’ve all seen similar outpourings with other iconic celebrity deaths, especially in recent years. In 2016 we had an unusually high amount of celebrity deaths, with iconic figures like David Bowie, Prince and others passing away.
And in a sense the tributes, posts, videos, flowers laid, listening to or watching their work…are all forms of grief ritual.
In the last few years we’ve almost been creating our own rituals for grieving these people, who despite not meeting in person, we felt a tangible, sometimes deep, personal connection with.
In a way, the death of someone a massive public profile and connection with so many people, like Matthew Perry, has shown us the power of healthy grief rituals.
Imagine we could create rituals to grieve our loved ones, our lost jobs, moving home, friendships ending, relationships ending, and the suffering we see in the world.
Imagine we could each create ways of processing and expressing our grief in healthy ways, which don’t cause harm to others and allow us to heal.
“I would like to be remembered as somebody who lived well, loved well, was a seeker and his paramount thing is that he wants to help people”
- Matthew Perry
In his tragically short life, Matthew Perry showed so much courage in doing the work of healing, and above all, vulnerably sharing his story with the world. He inspired so many people to start the journey of healing. He inspired people like me with his courage. He gave me and many others hope, with how much he valued the importance of talking about out feelings, not hiding them.
Maybe we the greatest tribute we could pay to Matthew Perry, would be to start listening to our grief, acknowledging it, and doing the work of healing.
In that way, Matthew Perry could end up helping us all, in a way even he could never imagine.
Beautiful work, my friend. This one also hit me harder than expected and you really touched on why.
Yes, I agree - it really does seem to be a modern grief ritual. Really well written.