A few weeks ago, Jumanji was airing on television. I didn’t watch the entire movie — I’ve seen it more times than I can count, and I had other things going on — but I tuned in long enough to see Robin Williams make his appearance. I remember thinking how incredible he was on screen, and how unique — how no one could ever replace him.

Three days ago, I was shocked to learn that this one-of-a-kind man, who had such a large presence on stage and screen and who made so many people laugh, was gone.

While the entire world was still reeling from the loss of Williams, media outlets reported Tuesday the death of another legend, Lauren Bacall. I confess to not being as familiar with her work — there are many classic films I still need to see — but her contribution to American film is so widely known that this was another extremely sad day in the entertainment industry.

I’ve always thought it interesting how emotional people can get when a celebrity dies: images of people crying so hysterically over the loss of a person they had never met, someone they couldn’t possibly have known. Even if we view our favorite artists or athletes as something more than a complete stranger, we can only know the public persona of these stars. Sure, in some cases a celebrity’s public image is very much like the real personality, but other times it’s not even close. When all you know about an actor or actress is the characters they’ve played, how can you really mourn the person?

It’s not that I’ve been entirely unaffected by celebrity deaths. I’ve felt a sadness at the loss of talent and, in cases such as Heath Ledger‘s, at the loss of potential. But until this past year, I’ve never truly mourned a celebrity death the way I would mourn the death of a friend or relative. It changed a little over a year ago, when I woke up one morning to a text from a friend telling me Cory Monteith from Glee had passed away. His was the first celebrity death that really hit me.

Perhaps it was the fact that Monteith was just a year older than me, or that I had followed his career sporadically since he appeared as an extra on Supernatural in 2005. Or perhaps it was that, unlike Ledger, whom I only kept up with occasionally in the media and whenever he had a new film out, Monteith was someone I was watching regularly on television. His Finn Hudson was a character I had adored from the moment I began watching Glee: I loved his awkwardness and good heart, I sympathized with his struggles to find his place in the world and figure out what he wanted to do with his life post-graduation. And like many Glee fans, I was looking forward to Finn’s and Rachel’s inevitable wedding. (I was also charmed by Monteith’s and Lea Michele‘s real-life romance.)

Whatever the reason, Monteith’s death hit me hard. With Monteith, I mourned for his friends and family and the loss of potential. But Monday night, Williams’ death hit me harder.

In the case of Williams, I think I finally understand how people can be so affected by the death of someone they’ve never known in person. For Williams, I mourned because I had grown up on his work and can’t imagine a world without him. There were so many Williams films my family watched over and over: Mrs. Doubtfire, Aladdin, Hook, Fern Gully, Robots. I think my brother and I wore out our VHS copy of Popeye. And then there was Dead Poets Society, which I had watched at a rather young age, and it became a favorite of mine before I was 13. I was a fan of his recent sitcom The Crazy Ones. And I even remember watching reruns of Mork and Mindy, which had its run before I was even born, whenever we could find them on TV.

Williams didn’t just make movies and television shows for us to enjoy, he created characters that touched all our lives in some form or another. He was Mork and Peter Pan and Genie and so many other characters I loved so much. There isn’t a time in my memory when I couldn’t quote some line of Williams’ from one of his many memorable performances. My childhood was shaped by his films, and now, suddenly, that man is gone. It truly does feel like something important has been lost from the world.

However, with both Williams and Monteith, I also mourn because there was a side to them that they kept hidden from the rest of the world. It was those private struggles that eventually consumed them, as they did for Philip Seymour Hoffman this year and so many others before them.

I won’t try to pretend I know anything about severe depression or addiction, but it really saddens me when people look at celebrities and all they see is the manner of their death. Monteith and Hoffman shouldn’t be defined by their addictions, nor Williams by his depression. In the episode “The Quarterback,” Glee’s Kurt Hummel responds to the death of Monteith’s character (and surely speaks for the cast about the actor) by asserting: “Everyone wants to talk about how he died … but who cares? One moment in his whole life. I care more about how he lived.”

I think this line rings very true: The celebrities that we love, who have had an impact on countless lives, deserve to be remembered for how they lived, not the manner in which they died.

The world lost two legends this week, and we’ve lost some great talent just in the past year alone. While it may feel like the world is a little less full without them, they will live on forever in the works they leave behind and in the people they have touched.

And hopefully the tragic deaths of people like Monteith, Hoffman, and Williams will help shine a light on the struggles people face — even those who seem to have it all. Remember: no matter what you’re going through, you are not alone.