When your Best Friend dies….

When your best friend dies, you remember everything.

I still remember the way I dropped the telephone on the ground—listening as I heard the distant moans of my friends voices. There I was, twenty years old and yet my life felt like it had just ended. My mind waded in the darkness, for a moment that was so long, that I learned what eternity was. I couldn’t deny it any longer. It was here. He was dead and I wasn’t ready yet.

If you are reading this blog I am sorry for your loss, I’m really sorry because people expect to lose their parents or grandparents at some point in their life, but no one prepares for their best friends to die. In fact, we expect these people to be around when our parents die and act as our bedrock when times get tough. So, when your best friend dies it is absolutely earth shattering. Surviving the death of your best friend is one of the most difficult things you will ever have to do. You should understand the following things to move on in your life. Moving on is not a easy job to do.

First, society doesn’t recognize what a big deal friendship is.

You know that your friend is family, that you love them as deeply, maybe even more deeply than your brother or your mom.  Plato and Aristotle knew.  But society in general?  That is another story.  Society often values family relationships over friendships.  There is a weight given to your relationship with your parents or siblings or grandparents or spouse that comes from the title alone.  

Somehow talking about your bestie often doesn’t feel like it carries that same weight. Ironically, your relationship with that friend may have been as, if not more, important.  This can feel especially crappy when a friend dies and those around you don’t give you the same support and validation that they would have had it been a family member.

It brings up our own mortality.

This one always feels weird or self-involved to talk about it, but it is a fact so let’s all just get over it.  When people die it brings up our feelings about our own death.  This can be especially true when it is someone who is “like” us and our friends are often “like” us.  Research proves it – we are often friends with people who are similar to us in age, health, socio-economic status, education, and who are even genetically similar to us.  For real!  When they die it is a reminder that we will die and, who knows, it could be soon.

You think you will never have another friend like them again.

And you know what, this is true.  You will never have another friend exactly like the person you lost.  Your friendship was as unique as the two of you.  When we grieve, there is often a pervasive fear of losing that connection to the person we lost.  We worry that if we start to feel ‘better’ it means we are forgetting that person or moving on.  With friendships, there can be a feeling that, if I let new friends in, I am forgetting or replacing the friend I lost.  

Keep in mind, no one is ever going to replace your friend.  Ever.  You will have new friendships, they will be unique and close and amazing in their own way, but they will never be a replacement for the person who died.  

Your friend is who always got you through the tough stuff.

When I think of my best friend, he is the one I go to when life gets tough: financial troubles, college problems and job problems, illnesses, deaths, whatever. So when that person is gone you feel especially alone.  You feel desperate, lonely, and devastated and your instinct is to call the one person who is no longer there to support you.

So what can you do?

Well, I am not going to run through all the general grief coping stuff here .But I will mention a couple of things to keep in mind.  

First and most importantly, when others around you are making you feel like you don’t have the right to grieve the loss of your friend in the way or time that you need, remember that you absolutely deserve the space to grieve.  Work probably won’t give you bereavement leave, others may not acknowledge the depth of your relationship, but it is important you remember that you have every right to the grief and devastation you feel.

Something that can help with that is connecting with others who have lost friends.  This can be tough because often support groups are for the loss of a spouse, parent or child. Even if it is a general support group, you find it is filled with people who have lost a family member, not a friend.  

Music, music, music

Lastly, look at music.  I know, this seems like a big shifting of gears. But as I was thinking about friendship and the nature of friendship, it got me thinking about music.  Though many parts of society don’t validate and talk about the loss of a friend, musicians seem to be the exception. Just take your headphones, close your eyes and play the music. That feeling is inevitable.