🔗 Share this article

Countless enduring friendships commence with a period of slight apprehension, and so it was with my friendship with my dear friend. We were 18, in our initial year at college, while also attending a few language courses. I hadn’t learned her name, had never caught her speak in our native tongue but, with her voluminous curls and approachable, inquisitive stare, she stood out. I believed she would be far too popular to spend time with someone like me.

On a particular Saturday, at a student social in the grotty student pub, alcohol became an social lubricant and the barriers vanished. Brief smiles in the corridor became upbeat welcomes, then toasties in the coffee shop, followed by evening adventures and soothing headaches in front of the TV in our dilapidated homes.

Originally from a Northern Irish city, I am from my own region, and we formed a tie over being away from family, not quite slotting into the rapidly forming social groups, and, like most students in the that decade, never having any money. Whenever either managed to get hold of some – from a temporary employment, a celebration or a lenient financial advisor – then it meant we both had money. In advance of our fall semester grant cheques had even been processed, we would dash out to buy something new to wear to lift our spirits, surviving on tea and toast and affordable drinks until the next cash infusion.

A few years later, we became close with another companion (not her real name), and the group faced life’s milestones together. My friend had her newborn the same year I came out as homosexual, and we survived relationship changes, career shifts, new homes and personal struggles. Triumphs she enjoyed, of which there were plenty, were collective; we felt each other’s tragedies as if they were our own.

When we became “real adults”, Emma and I would spend weekend days at the family residence with her, her partner, and two children, doing “our weekly ritual”: cooking a dinner together, catching up, sharing laughs and swaying in the heart of the home to melodies from our youth. I had a piece of heaven and didn’t understand until it was lost.

An incoming message came from my other friend, one sunny summer afternoon. Taking a peek at my device, I believed it was a spontaneous catch up about the weekly gathering holiday to our destination we were scheduled to go on in two weeks’ time. She had died unexpectedly and unexpectedly; there was no action anyone could have done.

Hearing the news was the strangest, most terrifying experience of my life. I felt something instinctive, almost, in the stun and fear of my immediate grief. I was crushed to lose my family matriarchs years earlier, but I knew that was the order of things; passing in later life. Her passing was unusual, unfamiliar. It didn’t feel real, it couldn’t be true – we had been communicating the day before, we had arrangements that weekend, holiday shopping to do. It was a random Wednesday; how could this nothing of a day become so significant in a flash? The day of her death is a dark, distorted puzzle component that doesn’t fit the sunny, cheerful and fun puzzle of a life we had shared. I remember it with photographic horror.

In the following days and weeks, Emma and I set aside our grief, prioritising her loved ones. They would be hit hardest by her death, after all – above all her young sons. Along with other relatives, we kept things ticking over, and tackled agonising admin duties. I drafted and read a tribute at her funeral on behalf of her friends, and assigned myself the task of cancelling the holiday. The booking agency were heartless and handled me as if I was attempting fraud. They demanded to speak to her heartbroken husband and asked for details locked away in her work email. I remember taking images of her travel document and proof of passing to secure a hoped-for refund – nothing hits you with the truth harder than plain English, in writing, on official paper. Her home felt so changed, the rooms bigger and barer, hollow. It was like a terrible vision, really, except I’ve never woken up from it.

Engaging yourself with logistics is a coping mechanism but, if anything, it postponed coming to terms with her loss. Moving away from the close bubble of mourners was difficult. The world looked unchanged, but my heart felt broken, the depth of my grief impossible to share to outsiders.

When we consider others’ grief, we tend to relationships’ expected orders as a measure. As a culture, we recognise the extent of sorrow of losing a loved one; it needs minimal context, even for those nurturing grudges. Her children would never have another mother, her husband had lost the soulmate, and, as a daughter and sister, she was unique. Such losses are heartbreaking and life-changing. A bond is harder to quantify. What entitlement did I have to mourn for her so powerfully when I had different people?

The intensity of my grief seemed to puzzle people who didn’t know her. They would ask how deep we were, how long I’d known her, how often we saw each other. I felt I somehow had to defend it, and stress how much she signified to me. I began to feel remorseful, as if I didn’t have a right to be so totally lost when the lives of those nearer to her had been torn apart.

Relationships are ongoing conversations … they outlast and endure beyond partnerships

After losing a family member, nobody expects much from you for months, but my friend and I had to get back to our jobs. I was given one week off from my contract role; she spent days at her desk, holding back tears, barely concentrating. We weren’t ready, but grief is troublesome for others and has a deadline; your sorrow makes them uneasy.

The voids in my life gradually affected me. A missing birthday text comes through, a new interesting piece of gossip goes untold, your calendar has more blank spaces, formerly mutual activities become diminished. Among the initial things Nichola and I would do on meeting up was evaluate each other’s clothes. All these years later, when I buy something, I try to visualise her reaction. My other friend does the same.

Maybe we overlook the grief of friends because “friend” is a cover-all label, applied to acquaintances and {acquaintances|contacts|associates