Our society frames grief as something earned by proximity. Spouses, parents, children, and siblings are automatically considered hardest hit by loss (though some siblings I’ve met would disagree). One step below this unspoken hierarchy is a second group made of former spouses, boyfriends/girlfriends, other friends, house staff, roommates, coworkers, and next-door neighbors. While they may likely attend the funeral, this second group is rarely included in the planning or invited to sit near the front of the assembly. Then there is a third group. They can often be found in the shadows. They are overlooked. Their grief is discounted, depreciated – even questioned.
This is the unspoken social math of grief.
But homicide fractures this equation.
Some of the most profoundly bereaved people I’ve met could be described as strangers or casual acquaintances. The witnesses. Clients. The massage therapist. The dog walker. The bartender who broke up a fight only to have it rekindle into a homicide. Someone who arrived at a house at exactly the wrong moment.
They are homicide survivors, too, in every sense of the word —though no one ever refers to them that way.
There’s a term for this: disenfranchised grief. Grief that is real, deep, and destabilizing—but not socially sanctioned or recognized. Grief without a script, or a role.
One example stays with me.
After the Rob Reiner household homicide, a massage therapist arrived at the residence, unaware of what had just occurred. Behind the white gate was an unresponsive house, a place where time had abruptly stopped inside. Realizing something was amiss, this helper tried to restore order by calling the Reiners’ daughter, who led herself into the house while the massage therapist left.
It was a small act. Practical. Human.
But the massage therapist did not leave unchanged.
This near-stranger had unknowingly stepped into the immediate vortex of violent death, into a space saturated with disbelief, terror, and irreversible loss. We all know that you do not need to witness the murder to be impacted. What awaited her was the same as other homicide survivors: questioning by police, spotlighting by the media, and nosiness by people not in the need to know. And yet there was no language for what she was forced to carry away that sunny afternoon. No intervention. No acknowledgement. No ritual of release.
What was expected was a return to duties as usual.
This is what disenfranchised grief often looks like after homicide.
You help in a moment of crisis.
You witness something unspeakable. You absorb the shock.
And then you are silently rebuffed by those who reserve empathy and prayers for the immediate family.
Violent death has a radius. It ripples outward, touching people who never appear in court documents, graveside, or obituaries. First responders know this. Emergency room staff know this. Therapists, clergy, journalists, neighbors, and bystanders know this. Yet culturally, we still cling to the unfounded idea that grief must be justified by bloodline or legal status.
Homicide exposes how flawed that belief is.
Disenfranchised grief is not a lesser grief. It is often a lonelier one. There is no socially approved role, no clear entitlement to mourn, and often a quiet shame attached to feeling “too affected” by something others deem is not your burden to carry.
But the nervous system doesn’t dismiss itself so easily. The body keeps its own record. It always does.
For many of these “strangers,” the grief shows up through intrusive images, sudden tears, increased blood pressure, hypervigilance, avoidance, irritability, insomnia, and a sense the world is no longer as safe as it once appeared. They may never connect these symptoms to the moment they crossed paths with violence. Or they may connect it—and feel foolish for doing so.
They are not foolish.
They are human.
When we talk about homicide survivors, we must widen the frame. Not to dilute the suffering of families—but to acknowledge the full human impact of violent death. Healing requires truth, and the truth is that homicide leaves very few untouched. Violence disrespects the artificial boundaries imposed by society.
Sometimes the person who needs permission to grieve is the one you never knew you’d meet; the overlooked, the silenced, the shellshocked.
