Reflections on Death and Grief

A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing the Internet and looked up an article on National Public Radio about how to use my smartphone less. I found the Life Kit article very insightful, and because I am curious and tend to doomscroll a lot, I scrolled down and found a headline that stopped me dead in my tracks:

Michelle Trachtenberg, actress, dies at 39.

I was shocked. I don’t have Instagram or other social media, so I didn’t know what had happened to Michelle leading up to her sudden death, but all I knew was that I was, like so many other Millennial kids who grew up watching Michelle Trachtenberg in the 1990s and 2000s, was devastated to hear the news of her death. Like I usually do when an actor or musician I love passes away, I look up news stories, scour the Internet for articles with details about the cause of death, etc. But I had a moment of reflection and realized that the best thing I could do to deal with my grief at that moment, which was swallowing me whole as I sat alone and sad at my desk in the office, was to chant this Buddhist mantra called Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. As I chanted, it wasn’t like my grief disappeared. In fact, just a few minutes before writing this, I had to remove myself from the kitchen, where I was sautéing mushrooms for a pizza, and bawl my eyes out. I just let myself accept that I was in a lot of emotional pain after hearing about the death of Michelle because as a kid I really loved her in the movie Harriet the Spy. I cannot remember how many times I rented that movie from Blockbuster and watched it, but it was my favorite movie and book when I was younger, and I loved Michelle’s acting in that movie. I hadn’t seen Ice Princess, but I remember watching music videos by Aly and AJ for songs on the Ice Princess soundtrack, and I loved seeing Michelle’s beautiful smile and her childlike innocence. Unfortunately, I wasn’t familiar with most of her work, so I can’t say I was a die-hard Michelle Trachtenberg fan. I had only seen her in Harriet the Spy and the music video by Fall Out Boy for “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” where she makes a cameo during the staged funeral for lead singer Pete Wentz. I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my sister and aunt for a few episodes at some point in my adolescence, but I didn’t watch the entire Buffy show. I just remembered that Michelle Trachtenberg was in Buffy. They still have not come out with the autopsy results of Michelle’s death, and to be honest, I had to reflect on why I wanted to know so many personal details about her life. From what I read, sources say she was a pretty private person, and I never got to meet her unfortunately, so I didn’t know much about her personal life.

This definitely made me feel like I did when Aaron Carter, who was another key pop culture staple for Millennials, died at 34 in 2022. As a kid, you worship this person and their music, and you see them in music videos dancing and surrounded by all these preteen girls who are just beginning to experience those early stages of sexual awakening, screaming and holding up signs with “I Love You” and begging for autographs. And then when you get older and go through your own difficult issues, like every human being, you’re harshly judged for not staying, like a wax figure, into your permanent role as this cute, baby-faced kid who sang songs about beating Shaquille O’Neal at basketball and having a (non-alcoholic) party at your house. Even I was guilty of this. I thought I really knew Aaron Carter’s life and had a deep connection with him, but after doing a lot of reflecting, I realized that I only really had this image in my head of him being this super-cute kid. I feel bad for comparing him to Justin Bieber, but he really was the Justin Bieber of my generation growing up. When I was in elementary school, I always heard his songs on Radio Disney, and they were always fun bops that I jammed to in the car seat while my mom drove me to school.

I feel like something similar that happened to Michelle Trachtenberg in the last few years of her life. I was casually browsing the Internet a few months before her death because I was curious about what happened to her and so many other child stars that I grew up with, and there was an article about how people on Instagram criticized a photo of her that she posted. They said stuff like, “You look sick,” and that must have really hurt her. I remember she responded to the critics by saying she was older, and she wasn’t 14 anymore. I didn’t think much about it, but that stuck with me. Again, I don’t know the full story since I don’t have Instagram, but I think reflecting on Michelle and Aaron’s deaths remind me that, at the end of the day, the child stars I grew up with were dealing with issues outside of the spotlight, and most of them probably wanted their privacy respected. I thought about even writing a movie review of Harriet the Spy to remember Michelle Trachtenberg, and I might do that, but right now I am still processing the grief around her death. I also was kind of shocked when I found out about the actor Gene Hackman’s death, which I found out about just a day after finding out about Michelle Trachtenberg’s death. I didn’t grow up watching a lot of movies where Gene Hackman was acting in them. As a kid, I watched the trailer for a movie he was in called Welcome to Mooseport, but I was too young to watch the movie, so I never saw it (I wasn’t allowed to watch PG-13 films when I was a preteen). But it made me reflect on how I think about the deaths of actors and musicians I love, like Robin Williams and Amy Winehouse. When I read the writings of the late educator Daisaku Ikeda, he discusses the Buddhist perspective on life and death. Reading the Buddhist perspective on life and death helped me understand that at the end of the day, even with fame and success, actors and musicians are still human beings with their own personal struggles and worries.

I remember crying my eyes out when I found out that Aaron Carter died. I went to my Gohonzon, which is the Buddhist altar I chant to every day and chanted with tears running down my face. I told my mom about Aaron Carter’s death, and she encouraged me to keep chanting for his eternal happiness and told me that I can chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for people who have passed away. At first, I felt silly for crying over the death of someone who I had never met in my life, someone I only knew through their music, but my mom understood and said that it is still sad when someone dies because they still touched you in some way through their music or film. I am going to continue chanting for Aaron Carter and Michelle Trachtenberg.