Jack Lorentzen Died Suddenly, but His Legacy Lives Through His Fiancé, Jack Ciapciak
Jack Lorentzen and Jack Ciapciak became engaged two months before Lorentzen's death on Christmas Eve 2022.
Published March 6 2025, 11:14 a.m. ET
Some love stories tug at the heartstrings so much that they must be developed into a book or movie based on the iconic love. However, some stories are so beautiful that they need a wider audience, which is where TikTok comes in.
In late February 2025, one couple's love story went viral on TikTok after New York City-based TV writer Jack Ciapciak shared his beautiful and tragic love story with his fiance, Jack Lorentzen.
The viral TikTok post follows Ciapciak as he tells the story of how his adorable monument of the day he asked Lorentzen to spend the rest of his life with him has become the place where he and Lorentzen's loved ones have collectively mourned his sudden loss.
What happened to Jack Lorentzen?
On Feb. 25, 2025, Ciapciak shared multiple slides detailing the remarkable way he decided to start healing after Lorentzen's death. He shared that he proposed to his late fiance before he died of an undiagnosed heart condition. According to Today, Lorentzen died on Christmas Eve, 2022, two months after Ciapciak proposed at an LGBTQ+ memorial.
“Two months before he died, I proposed to Jack by surprising him with a bench in Hudson River Park,” Ciapciak's post reads, showing the next photo of the bench's plaque, which read, “Jack, Will you marry me? Love, Jack.”
Ciapciak added in his TikTok that he planned on changing the plaque to read "Jack & Jack" alongside their wedding date. However, when his fiance died, he decided to find a message that represented who he was.
Ciapciak landed on a quote from one of Lorentzen's favorite movies, Never Been Kissed, starring Drew Barrymore. He shared that his fiance would rent it often and incessantly recite the lines from the rom-com. Ciapciak said one of the movie's lines, "Find out who you are and try not to be afraid of it," was the perfect way for him to honor Lorentzen's memory.
"It just clicked immediately in my head," Ciapciak told Today. "I was like, 'That is the exact message he would want to share with the world,' because he always talked about when he came out, everything in his life fell into place once he started living authentically."
Jack Lorentzen's fiance, Jack Ciapciak, uses his TikTok to express his ongoing grief.
Since finding the perfect quote to remember his late fiance, Ciapciak has used Lorentzen's bench to mourn his loss and the life they should've had together. In his TikTok, he shared how their families gathered at the bench on Oct. 14, 2023, which would've been their wedding day. Ciapciak also recalled him and Lorentzen's lifelong friends getting yelled at for illegally drinking at the park, a fact he said his fiance would be more than happy about.
The content creator also revealed he walks by Lorentzen's bench nearly daily as part of his grieving process. Ciapciak also said that expressing his grief on TikTok with over 30,000 followers has helped him heal.
"I was having bad days, and it was hard to share that with my loved ones,” he recalled to Today. "I didn’t want to burden my mom or my friends. So I turned to the internet, just recording how I was feeling every day.”
Ciapciak said he didn't expect to find a community of people who, unfortunately, can relate to his pain. He explained that the support and vulnerability his followers have to share their experiences of grief with him before and after his and Lorentzen's video went viral is unmatched.
"One message that really stuck with me was, ‘The air they breathed is still here. So when you miss them the most, take a deep breath, and it’s as if they’re right there with you,’” Ciapciak said. “That just blew me away."