Losing A Friend
A lot of bad news is delivered via notification these days. Rolling over half asleep and checking the phone to see Brexit has happened. Trump is now president. And then all the disasters of 2020. Lockdowns, death rates, whatever BoJo the Clown’s up to next. I’ve become used to checking my phone first thing in the morning and being inured to whatever bad news it has for me this time.
But then, on 27th August I woke, checked my phone with sleepy eyes, and clicked on a Facebook notification. It told me that my friend C had died at just 35.
(A warning: you may have guessed there are sad things ahead, but there’s also some joy. If you’re vulnerable right now, it might upset you to read further. Do what’s best for you, stay safe and take care xxx)
There can’t be anyone reading this who hasn’t had an experience of death (and if miraculously you haven’t, I love you and I fear for you. I want to wrap you in cotton wool and stop it before it gets you). The raw pain of losing people you love is something we try not to think about, but none of us escape. When it comes along, it’s a brutal punch to the nose, it stings our eyes with shock and hollows our guts out. Death is a fucker and I’m mad at it.
Particularly when it comes for someone still so young. C lived in New York, but being from Georgia, had Southern hospitality and filled you with food at any opportunity. She had endless energy, a passion for adventure and travel, a love of the arts and a crazy, world-illuminating laugh. She had not long returned from a birthday trip to Mexico with her husband and her last Facebook post asked for recommendations for a moving service. She was in the very middle and midst of her life, making plans with her usual high energy and vibrancy.
And then… Stop. After a short illness, she’s gone, as sudden as a thunderclap, and those of us left behind can do nothing but miss her and try to make sense of it.
Of course, that is impossible to do. But perhaps we can make sense of our emotions when someone dies, or share and untangle them at least. Particularly the bafflement and shock that comes with losing someone way before their time. There is no ‘better or worse’ loss. Grief and death are not a competition. But there are different qualities to grief, a variety of flavours (although they all taste of shit). Losing a friend, one of your own peer group has a different nature to losing a parent, or someone older. We expect to lose grandparents and parents, horrific though it is. We don’t expect to lose our peers.
Grief experts Cruse, give us a long list of emotions that make up our ‘new normal’ when we’re grieving. We all get to make our own particular cocktail of them. (My own particular blend contains overwhelming rage, a sense of injustice, and despair (garnished with a dark sense of humour)
The injustice cuts particularly deep when someone dies young and that can turn quickly to rage. I first lost a friend in 2014 and boy, I was angry. So, angry. Doctors should have done more, God (if there was one) should not have prevented it, death should have fucked off and left her alone. E was tiny, energetic and a super-talented dancer who performed in the Olympic opening ceremony. Although she was the youngest who lived in our flat, she was the ‘House Mama’, sensibly dealing with bills and gently nudging us to keep things shipshape. We had a mutual obsession with Broadchurch and although I’d moved out by then, I came back to the flat to watch episodes with her.
You may have seen this fantastic article by Elliot Dallen that went viral last month. Like Elliot, E knew that she was ill, but also like him, didn’t let a little thing like dying stop her living well. In the last photo of her, she is with her boyfriend. He looks hollow, grey, as though he is the one gravely unwell. E is glowing, full of her usual smiles and sparkle. I still keep with me a sense of wonder at her almost superhuman grace. She was looking death right in its damn ugly face and radiating life and joy, happy to be with those she loved. E reminds me not to let bitterness and rage take root. There’s no point wasting your time being angry at death. It doesn’t care. You’re just Grampa Simpson, shaking your fist at the clouds.
Guilt was something that hit me hard when my friend J died in 2018. My mum reminds me that when met (on our first day of secondary school), I told her “I never want to see that place again, but I made a friend called J”. She continued to keep our spirits up in our academic prison with her wicked sense of humour and stubborn refusal to do anything she did not want to do. She loved animals and she loved to run. She was fearless and amazing. The month after she died, it was her birthday, and mine. I hated that I was turning 37 and she never would. It felt like I’d abandoned her on a battlefield, that we’d let her fall and left her behind. It was stupid, but grief and guilt aren’t logical, right? I missed her. I wished she was with us. I felt like I’d let her down.
On my birthday, I gave myself a big old slap for all those times I moaned about getting old. Every birthday, or grey hair or eye wrinkle is a bloody privilege we are lucky to have. Even if things are shit, we still have the possibility they will get better. We shouldn’t feel guilty for getting older without those we’ve lost, but we should try to feel grateful we’re still here.
And then, there’s despair. When we lost C, I felt the loss of E and J once again, and my Dad and others I’d loved. I was angry, frightened and overwhelmed with despair. I could see a long line stretching out in front of me for all the years ahead, with markers at each point where I would lose someone I loved. I cried. A lot.
Sorry. That got dark. As things sometimes do, but they get lighter again. I hope, if you have lost someone, you will soon find glimpses of light and a way through. Such weird and sticky, unnerving feelings come with grief, but others have made it through and are with you. If there is one thing that goes hand and hand with death, its love. The pain is a direct result of the love we had for the person, the greater the pain, the luckier we were to have them in our lives. And love pulls those of us who remain tighter together. On the day we found out about C, our gang of Hong Kong friends hung out on Facebook Messenger for most of the day. Across 3 continents and 5 countries we shared our love of C, our memories of fantastic times, and we supported each other. The only thing missing was our girl.
I’m not sure I believe in an afterlife. But if there is somewhere that C is, I love her there, just as I loved her (and E and J) on earth. Death can’t erase love - we still have the experiences we shared, kind messages that came at just the right time, silly gifts that continue to make us laugh, stories, photos, memories. I’m not going to lie and say that’s enough, or pretend like it makes everything better. You’re too smart for that bullshit. But it’s what we’ve got and it’s no small thing. And we love them. And we miss them. We miss them.
Written by Mel Coghlan
Mel Coghlan is a an exams organiser, event co-ordinator, sometime tour guide and spreadsheet queen from London.
When not doing all of the above, she enjoys writing, theatre, wine drinking and anything that staves off anxiety. Mel finds talking about herself in the third person disconcerting, but oddly pleasing.