Why Does James Van Der Beek's Death Hit So Close to Home for His Fans?

When I first heard of James Van Der Beek’s passing, I felt like I had been punched in the gut. Obviously, I didn’t know the actor. I wasn’t even a big fan of his, though I do find the way he spoke about being a husband and father quite beautiful. For a few minutes, I couldn’t wonder why I — and so many of the gen X-ers and millennials I follow online — were so affected by this news. Is it just textbook parasocial behavior…or something more?

A few hours after the news broke, I saw a post that immediately clarified those feelings. “Losing James Van Der Beek is really like losing a classmate for Millennials,” @philantrophygal posted on Threads. The post resonated with many, and for me, it makes perfect sense.

Celebrity deaths hit hard, but now that we’ve started losing more and more of the stars we grew up watching — Shannen Doherty, Luke Perry, Dustin Diamond, Aaron Carter, Michelle Trachtenberg, to name a few — it doesn’t just feel sad to see a star succumb to an untimely death. It reminds us of our own mortality.

It puts into perspective just how fast life moves, and it makes us acutely aware that we are transitioning into a new phase of our own lives.

I’m ten-plus years younger than Van Der Beek, but his illness and death are a sobering reminder. Like my fellow Gen X-ers and Millennials, I am aging into the point in my own life when I have to really take control of my health. Colonscopies, breast cancer screenings, and other routine checks — these are things I really need to stay on top of at this point in life, and Van Der Beek’s experience with colorectal cancer is a reminder that we are not “too young” to be thinking about these things, especially as we see cancer cases rise among young people. And that’s why this celebrity loss feels so heavy…for people around Van Der Beek’s age, it’s not just the loss of a star. It’s also the loss of a peer.