When I was small, I’d often tell my mom, “I wish I could stay this age, and you could stay your age forever.” Mostly, I said it because I was happy and didn’t want anything to change. But I also knew, even then, that the grown-ups wouldn’t always be with me. Once, during a visit at my grandma’s house, I sat dwarfed by the giant recliner my brother and I always fought over, and panicked that someday all the adults would die. My grandma got down on my level and said, “Don’t worry about that now, that’s not going to happen for a long long time.” It comforted me.
Until September 2017, when I came home from a summer away to find the reality of my grandma’s worsening Lewy Body dementia waiting for me and knew “a long long time” was here. She died on December 23, 2017. Immediately, I thought only about mortality and that the one person who’d helped me with that fear had succumbed to it.
There’s a lot of talk in the media and online about mindfulness and “staying present,” which involve not getting stuck in the questions with uncertain answers about the future and living. Lately, the “present” means a lot of things, including thousands of people in the US dying every day during a global pandemic. A year to the month before the pandemic officially started, legendary “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My grandmother’s husband, (my grandfather, who I never met) died of pancreatic cancer more than 30 years ago, and for as long as I knew her, she never dated, or remarried. Instead, she filled one half hour every weeknight with the new man in her life: Alex Trebek.
A woman as sweet as strawberries in season, my grandmother had just one rule: don’t call during “Jeopardy.” And we didn’t (or tried not to), but we did play along with her, all in our separate homes, knowing she was ready to come back to us when the final credits rolled. Like our family, millions of other people welcomed Trebek into their homes each night to teach them something, to test their knowledge, or to treat them to just a bit of snark. Months after his death and following his final “Jeopardy” episodes, Trebek’s fans and longtime viewers feel entitled to their own piece of his legacy, writing online about their shared grief, bringing themselves closer together by shared memories.
Meanwhile, at the time of writing, 369,000 Americans have died as a result of Covid-19 – an inconceivable number. It seems impossible to grieve, or even understand the magnitude, of that many deaths at once. In the second half of 2020, many media outlets tried to make clear what we’ve lost by telling individual stories, focusing on the profound impact one person can have on those around them, and illustrating that each of those lives mattered. Of course they matter.
For almost a year now, in the absence of an ability to feel real shared grief for those great many lost to a disease that most of us had no idea was coming, I think mortality is quietly top of mind. People in the prime of their lives, healthy people, are likely considering the fragility of human life for the first time. I’ve noticed that for me personally, celebrity deaths have felt heavier. For example, when Alex Trebek died, a household name and television institution, watching the floods of stories about his legacy, and tweets about what he meant to so many, felt extra cathartic.
It might’ve been because I remember listening to the adults at family gatherings playing along during “Jeopardy,” wondering if I’d ever know the answers to the questions. I remember exactly where I stood at my grandmother’s house when I got my very first Final Jeopardy answer right: “Starry Night,” knowing how proud everyone, especially Grandma, would be.
I have troves of memories of my dad turning “Jeopardy” on just so he could call my grandmother and try (and fail) to talk to her while they both watched, so he could get her to squeeze in a call during the commercials, or so he would know when it was over and could call her right after. I watched with him every night, and when I got older, we competed against each other. We kept watching, even as the world changed around us. We watched it when I came home on breaks from college, we watched it when we visited my grandma, and when we were all together for the holidays. Later, we watched in her hospital room, rehab, and nursing homes.
There have been so many moments when I’ve wished desperately for a soundtrack to my life, playing along to moments major and mundane. I’ve planned which songs and sounds would play when. Now, during a time when most of us are forced to break with tradition, pushed into the surf of a stormy present and future, grasping for meaning, for connection, and for comfort, I’ve realized that we all have soundtracks all along. Like so many of life’s moments, we don’t get to plan them. I know that Alex Trebek was part of mine, and so many others, his voice easing us into dinners, backing family-style buffets, and thawing the ice during frigid fights. The iconic theme song accompanied my mom’s hands laying side dishes upon the table. I can feel my parents’ couch underneath me while a pre-teen me announces “Alleeeex Trebek!” to my living room at the top of the show.
“For months, I’ve thought about the fact that hundreds of thousands of people woke up on January 1, 2020, not knowing they were going to die of something none of us haD ever heard of.”
Each of the thousands lost to the pandemic were part of the soundtrack of someone’s life, or something greater. They might’ve been the person someone else watched “Jeopardy” with, or any of the other routine activities we each perform to make the days more bearable, or better yet, enjoyable, for ourselves and each other. They were best friends, soulmates, partners, teachers, parents, kids, grown-ups. For months, I’ve thought about the fact that hundreds of thousands of people woke up on January 1, 2020, not knowing they were going to die of something none of us had ever heard of. Millions more didn’t know they’d be grieving. While I was lucky enough to spend the holiday break with family, I sat at the dinner table one night with my parents and our dog, laughing, and it struck me suddenly that someday I might find myself at that table alone.
I mostly stopped watching “Jeopardy” when my grandma died. It felt too hard, seeing Alex Trebek on the television screen and knowing she wasn’t somewhere watching him too, and even worse that “Jeopardy” demands memorization, and she died having lost her memory.
When Alex Trebek announced his illness, it was a little over a year after my grandmother died. I sat at my desk, finishing another day of work. I saw the announcement as I stepped onto the elevator, emitting an audible gasp.
Right then, I mourned all of the days before becoming conscious of Trebek’s mortality. Since then, I’ve tried to figure out why loving “Jeopardy” feels so simple, but I can’t – it feels like explaining my love for a somewhat stuffy game show totally removes its magic. But I do know that though I’ll never meet him, Alex Trebek and “Jeopardy” will always make me feel closer to my family, and I admire that he made his final wager on himself, showing fans how fiercely he’d fight to live.
After his death, I’ve also asked myself, why do celebrities we never meet or know become such important characters in our lives, and why do they feel even more significant to me right now? I think it’s because watching prominent figures and celebrities navigate life so publicly, and consuming their work so easily, helps prescribe some more meaning and understanding to my own life. Sometimes, their work helps me make sense of myself, our culture, and our world. Alex Trebek in particular provided a consistent safety blanket to return to during unpredictable times.
Celebrities and culture are part of how we relate to and identify with one another. Especially now, I have no idea what it feels like to lose your father or best friend or neighbor to a deadly virus. I don’t know what they meant to you, or the specific kind of pain you feel. But if you’re a loyal “Jeopardy” viewer, I might understand what Alex Trebek meant to you. The loss of Alex Trebek, however sad and horrible, is hardly the most tragic death to occur in the last year. But seeing the outpouring of grief from fans and colleagues when a celebrity dies is its own ritual, acknowledging all of the ways that person connects us to each other, to the world, and to living. People feel like they know celebrities. We may not be able to collectively feel the weight of hundreds of thousands of individual lives lost, but when we see the entire internet come together over one, it clarifies the impact of a single life, and how much greater and harder grief feels for those intimately experiencing it.
I don’t want to die, but I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of watching those I love die, and the impossible pain of trying to survive without their example, their support, their touch, and their love in arm’s reach. Long before she died, my grandmother told my mom that everyone she knew was dead. She’d outlived her parents, both of her younger siblings, her son’s best friend, her husband, and most of her own friends and peers. She was the last one. And she really lived. She spent her time gardening, going on solo trips with groups of complete strangers, taking painting classes, and being the most incredible grandparent there ever was. She drove a car into her 90s. More than three years after her death, I still have pervasive worry about the arrival of “a long long time,” but after seeing how she coped, I hope I’ll be okay.
I miss a long long time ago, when I didn’t have to consider my grandmother’s mortality. I miss not considering Alex Trebek’s mortality, and thinking that the people inside the TV would live forever. I miss not considering anyone’s mortality. Like “Jeopardy” without Alex Trebek, the Covid-19 pandemic has transformed our world into a new version of itself, one where everything feels a little bit new, different, and raw. We’re forging new traditions and rituals, and soothing ourselves with a whole arsenal of comforts. I think I’ll bring “Jeopardy” wherever we’re going, and my Grandma’s resilience and lust for life as an example of what to do.