For a long time, I didn’t understand mourning a celebrity. Sure there were some that hit harder than others…. Robin Williams, Patrick Swayze, Phillip Seymore Hoffman are a few that come to mind. But I didn’t actually know them. I knew their work. I knew their public personas. I knew what I read about in articles and interviews. But I didn’t know them. How do you mourn someone you didn’t know?

And then something changed. When you sit across from someone who tells you he doesn’t want you to go home, and instead thinks you should be hospitalized because you’re a danger to yourself, your awareness of mortality makes a hard and drastic turn. It feels real, and it feels scary.

Ever since that day, celebrity deaths break that most tender part of my heart like nothing else. Particularly when it is suicide, for obvious reasons, but regardless of the cause, it genuinely hurts. No matter who it is.

Yesterday Luke Perry died. I’ve seen him in Riverdale, but like so very many people my age, he’ll always be Dylan McKay. The 90’s version of James Dean, Luke’s Dylan McKay was every girl’s pretend boyfriend: Cool, brooding, gorgeous, and sensitive. A bad boy on the surface, but one with a soft spot. He was the perfect foil to Brandon Walsh’s squeaky clean boy next door. I think of Dylan McKay and I think of being 16. I don’t just remember being 16. I remember how it FELT to be 16. I remember falling in love for the first time, I remember having my heart broken for the first time, and I remember how all of life felt like an emergency. I remember it all with such a vivid acuity that it takes my breath away. I think of teenage angst and high school drama… and of looking forward every week to losing myself in the pretty, fantasy world of 90210. A world that was at once more perfect and more tragic than anything I’d ever experience in real life.

Luke Perry was a part of one of the most pivotal times of my life. Now he’s gone, and that makes me sad. What makes me mourn though? It has nothing to do with Dylan McKay. It has to do with Luke Perry, the human. A human who had kids and family and friends and people who loved him. A human who had hopes and fears and flaws and inside jokes with those in his closest circle. A human who – like me, like you, like all of us – was mortal.

We tend, consciously or not, to view celebrities as larger than life. But just like the rest of us, their time on this earth is inevitably limited, and no one knows when they’ll take that final breath. Luke Perry was only 52 when he died, too young by anyone’s standards. But death can be swift and cruel and unexpected. And that’s what scares me. That’s why I mourn.

I didn’t know Luke Perry. But he was all of us. Fragile, precious. An immortal soul in an all too mortal body. No matter who we are, how well we’re known, what we do for a living…. we’re all connected by our humanness. Both in life, and ultimately, in death. I mourn for Luke Perry today, but I also mourn for all of us. For the pain, for the sick, for the dying. At the same time, I rejoice. For the beauty, the love, the connection of those still here. We don’t know when our physical bodies will leave this earth, but right now, if you’re reading this? You’re alive. You’re breathing. There are people who’re glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here.

To those who knew and loved Luke Perry, I offer my deepest most heartfelt condolences. I wish for peace for his soul, and comfort for his loved ones.

For the rest of you…. Life is short. Love hard.