After Gene Wilder died, one of the most common sentiments I saw expressed online was that at least he was reunited with Gilda Radner—never mind that he had been married to someone else for nearly two decades at the time of his passing. I wrote about our collective lack of empathy for Wilder’s widow:

Imagine for a second that your beloved partner previously had a beloved partner whom he lost to a vicious disease. Imagine that you have spent your entire relationship hearing about your beloved partner’s beloved late partner. Imagine your beloved partner dies, after more than two decades of complete commitment to you, and LITERALLY ALL ANYONE CAN TALK ABOUT is how nice it is for him to be reunited in the afterlife with his late beloved partner.

The full essay is available on Medium.