I've never been able to figure out how to react when someone I sort of know but don't dies. It leaves me feeling confused. I don't quite feel grief, but at the same time it's something different from just hearing about a random stranger.

When the boy next door who'd been a friend one summer but then drifted away drowned. When the high school teacher who I'd always hated succumbed to cancer. When my former co-worker had a sudden and unexpected embolism. When the older brother of a college friend I'd lost touch with drowned.

Friday evening, I found out the a guy I'd been on a couple of dates with about a two years ago had died.

I suppose it is rather self-centered to hear the news of someone's death and wonder, "How am I supposed to feel about this?" but then, most reactions to death are self-centered. The dead are dead. We can be sad and angry for them that they didn't get to keep on living, but mostly it is about our loss (how much *we* will miss them) and our own mortality.

When someone we know well and care about dies, we are right in the midst of the grief. When we hear the news of a complete stranger's death, we get a comforatable seperation ("Oh gee, that's sad."). However, when the person is neither a loved one nor a stranger, it hits home in very odd ways. They aren't just a name in the newspaper, but our memories of them aren't quite as personal as they could be.

And so, I guess, the naval-gazing blog entries about death.