I cried, I sang, I processed my grief with hundreds of anguished fans at Toronto’s Liam Payne memorial

My initial reaction to Liam Payne of One Direction’s death was disbelief. Despite having been a fan (or Directioner) since 2011, I probably sounded blasé on the call with the friend who broke the news to me. My first, somewhat detached thought was a stupid, dark joke about how Payne had wanted the One Direction reunion so badly that he’d forced the rest of the band’s hands. There’s not a lot of wiggle room to turn down a funeral.
My 16-year-old self didn’t begin processing the news until the next day when I read the tributes posted by Payne’s surviving bandmates: Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik. Then, I worked my way chronologically through One Direction’s five-album discography.
Lyrics meant to be about youthful breakups took on a whole new meaning.
“Right now I wish you were here with me.”
“Now, I’m searching every lonely place, every corner, calling out your name, tryna find you but I just don’t know — where do broken hearts go?”
“I have loved you since we were 18.”
I tried to reconcile the two images of Payne: the beloved, responsible “Daddy Direction,” who took care of his bandmates and had spent his last few weeks donating to various GoFundMes, and then the man who had allegedly contacted his ex-fiancée and her family so persistently that she had resorted to sending him a cease and desist. There seemed to be room for only two streams of thought online — either he’d ascended to sainthood having never done anything wrong in his entire life or he was an unrepentant abuser who deserved to die alone and in pain. 
Like most things, I felt the truth was decidedly greyer than that. I thought of his dad, Geoff, travelling alone to Argentina to where his youngest child died. That child had once been a tiny, squirming baby in his arms — the fact that he would now bury him felt like a cruel, unnatural phenomenon. Payne’s 7-year-old child will now grow up without a father, knowing that the rest of the world got to spend more time with his dad than he did.

What helped me the most was attending a quickly organized memorial on Sunday evening in Toronto’s High Park, in the beautiful Hillside Gardens. Hundreds of grieving fans gathered to mourn Payne; we left photos, cards, bracelets, candy, flowers and more around a large tree.  By the end of the night, the entire tree had been encircled with tokens.  We also held a minute of silence.
Andrene Pham, 23, who organized the memorial, said that it felt “necessary to organize a proper way to say goodbye to Liam.”
“I wanted to hold a memorial for anyone, fans and non-fans to come here and join us to pay tribute to him and reflect on the impact that he has had on each of our lives,” said Pham.
Kenna Brodie, 23, took public transit all the way from Fergus, Ont. to attend the memorial. She said Payne was the reason she became a One Direction fan.
“I was always the responsible kid growing up, so in my friend group, being the responsible one, everyone said that I had to love Liam. It worked out because I did.”
Brodie said her heart “sunk into her soul” when she heard Payne had died. 
“I don’t even know how to process any of this right now. I think I’m still in this bubble of like it’s a joke,” Brodie said. “I needed to be around other people who understood the impact that this had.

 Even though we may not have known him personally, he still was an idol for us and somebody that we loved. We’re allowed to acknowledge that.”
Shehrbano Khalid, 15, and her dad came to the memorial from Oshawa. She said she didn’t want to just sit at home and cry.
“I’d rather be with people that actually understand me,” said Khalid. “Even though everybody around me is checking in on me and everything, they don’t really get it. For them, he’s just a celebrity, but he’s so much more than that to me.”
Khalid told me she had become a fan of Payne’s right before the COVID-19 pandemic started.
“He’s taught me so many things like forgiveness … he’s part of something that I love so much,” said Khalid, fighting back tears. “He’s literally my childhood. He’s the reason I’m alive really.”
I mostly held it together until people started playing music and singing along. As soon as I started singing along to “One Thing” with the crowd, I ended up in a losing battle with my tears. Though I’d never met anyone at the memorial before, strangers hugged me, gave me tissues and water, and reminded me that we were all going through this strange, complicated grief together.
Khalid suggested that the silver lining was knowing Payne, who struggled with addiction, was now at peace.
“Wherever he is, I hope he’s happy because he’s everything to us,” she said. “I really hope he’s happy because if he is happy, then I shouldn’t be crying, you know? That’s what I’m trying to tell myself.”