Celebrity grief is strange. And this month has been rough.
When someone famous dies, the world responds collectively, but we do not all experience the same loss. Sometimes I read the news, feel genuinely sad, and continue with my day. Other times, I put down my phone and cry as if the news reached into a deeply personal part of my life.
I bawled when Michael Jackson died. I can tell you exactly where I was, what I was doing, who I was with and moment by moment how my day went when the news dropped.
When Prince died, I was sad, but I was relatively okay.
That does not mean Michael Jackson’s life or work mattered more than Prince’s. So, don’t go there. It does not mean one person was more talented, valuable, or worthy of being mourned. Michael Jackson simply occupied a different place within my memories, my childhood, and my emotional connection to music.
Same when Chadwick Boseman died. And when Stan Lee died. I was in shambles.
And now, Peter Cullen has joined that very short list of people whose deaths did not simply make me sad. His death broke something open in me.
This week was already emotionally heavy.
It was the anniversary of Rasheena’s death, which carries its own kind of pain. Grief has no predictable schedule. One year, you may move through a difficult anniversary relatively okay. The next year, the same date can bring every emotion rushing back as if the loss just happened.
Then there was Hayden Panettiere.
For so many of us, she will always be the cheerleader we were told to save so we could save the world. If you grew up watching Heroes, you understand. That phrase, that show, and that period of television are permanently attached to a particular time in my life.
Then Dolly Parton died.
Then Tim Curry.
It felt like people whose work helped shape different parts of my childhood and adulthood were suddenly disappearing within days of one another.
I was sad. I was overwhelmed. I was already emotionally exhausted.
Then I saw that Peter Cullen had died.
Bruh.
Not Optimus Prime.
I bawled.
I do not mean that I became a little misty eyed and continued scrolling. I cried. The kind of cry that surprises you because you do not realize how deeply something has affected you until the tears are already falling.
I was not ready for that news.
Peter Cullen was 85 years old. I understand that 85 is a long life. I know that logically. My grandmother passed away at 89, so I understand what it means to recognize that someone lived for many years while still wishing they could have remained here longer.
Somehow, 85 still felt too young.
Maybe it is because the people and characters attached to our childhoods do not age in our minds. Optimus Prime did not grow old. He remained powerful, steady, wise, and dependable while the rest of us grew up and discovered that life was far more complicated than we once understood.
Optimus Prime was never just a giant robot to me.
He represented leadership, integrity, protection, courage, and responsibility. He represented the kind of strength that did not require cruelty. His voice carried authority, but it also carried comfort.
When Optimus spoke, you believed him.
You believed he would protect his people. You believed he would make the difficult decision. You believed he would stand between danger and those who depended on him. You believed there were still leaders who understood that power meant serving and protecting others.
That voice meant something.
Peter Cullen voiced many characters throughout his remarkable career. He was also the voice of Eeyore, which makes his talent even more incredible to me. He could give us the commanding presence of Optimus Prime and the soft, gloomy tenderness of Eeyore.
But Optimus holds a special place in my heart.
The face was animated. The body was mechanical. But the soul of Optimus Prime lived inside that voice.
There is something deeply personal about voice actors. We may never see their faces while watching the characters they bring to life, but their voices become familiar to us. They enter our homes, our childhoods, and our memories.
We can hear one sentence decades later and instantly return to another time in our lives.
I feel the same kind of grief when a voice actor from an anime I have deeply connected with passes away. Someone else may hear a performer reading lines. I hear the voice of a character who accompanied me through an entire season of my life.
That connection is real, even when we never met the person behind the voice.
I did not know Peter Cullen personally. I did not know Michael Jackson, Chadwick Boseman, or Stan Lee personally. I did not know their private routines, their quiet fears, or who they were when the cameras and microphones were turned off.
But I knew what their work made me feel.
I knew the joy of hearing a Michael Jackson song and immediately wanting to move. I knew what it meant to see Chadwick Boseman carry himself and his characters with such power and dignity. I knew the worlds Stan Lee helped create and how those stories made imagination feel limitless.
And I knew that voice.
I knew Optimus Prime.
There are many ways for another person’s life to touch ours. Personal relationships are not the only way we form meaningful emotional connections. Art reaches us without asking permission. A song can carry us through heartbreak. A character can help us understand courage. A story can give us somewhere to escape. A voice can make us feel protected when the world around us does not.
Certain people become connected to particular versions of us.
Their music reminds us of who we were when we first heard it. Their movies remind us of who sat beside us while we watched. Their characters remind us of what we believed was possible before life taught us to be more cautious.
When those people die, we are not only mourning the person.
Sometimes we are mourning the part of our own lives that they carried.
We are mourning an era. We are mourning our childhood. We are mourning the realization that the people who seemed permanent are not. We are mourning the fact that time continued moving, even when a part of us remained connected to the worlds they created.
That does not make the grief unreasonable.
It makes it human.
I know Peter Cullen’s voice will live on. We can return to the shows, movies, interviews, and characters. New generations will hear Optimus Prime without realizing that they are listening to a man whose work touched millions of people across decades.
The recordings will remain.
But the man behind the voice is gone.
That is the part that hurts.
There will never be another new moment of Peter Cullen stepping into a recording booth and becoming Optimus Prime. There will never be another breath behind that voice.
Maybe the news hit me so hard because this week had already made me emotionally tender. Maybe the anniversary of losing Rasheena opened something in me. Maybe the deaths of Hayden, Dolly, and Tim reminded me that the people whose work accompanied me through life will not be here forever.
Or maybe it really is just Optimus Prime.
I still cannot believe it.
To the artists, actors, storytellers, creators, and voices who became part of our lives without ever meeting us, thank you. Thank you for giving us memories. Thank you for giving us characters to believe in, music to carry us, and stories that made the world feel larger.
We may not have truly known you, but something you created knew us. It found us exactly when we needed it and remained with us long after that moment passed.
May we meet them in another life.
May they rest peacefully.
And may their souls find solace in knowing that they touched so many lives.
