What does it mean to lose your best friend? I don’t mean “get in a fight with and then never talk to again”. I mean lose. As in gone. Forever.
Well, I never gave it much thought. I shouldn’t have had to.
Shoulda.
Woulda.
Coulda.
Never have those three words meant more to me than they do now. Because I’m beginning to learn what this means, this concept of losing your best friend.
I lost mine.
Last week.
I wasn’t sure when I would get around to writing about it. It’s not the first thing you think of when you are first in shock, then bewildered and confused, then angry and laying blame everywhere, including at your own feet, then into survival mode of ignoring the fact, and finally to the first glimpse of acceptance that you know is going to come and go like the tide to the shore…back…and forth…and back…and forth…and back.
What brings me here tonight is a thought that I had never had prior to last Wednesday, Septemeber 8th, the night I learned the most devastating and life changing news of my thirty-six years of life, but now keeps recurring since death has shown me it’s haunting and barely distinguishable face (I do not yet see it clearly, it is completely unrecognizable to me). This thought is the worst of the bunch, and there come many, you just wait and see, and it is this: That everyone I know and love is going to also die and I am going to be left alone in a world full of strangers.
Do not get me wrong. I am aware that as I write this, I too am dying, and have been doing so since the moment I took my first breath. That I get. But the idea is that everyone that I know and love is going to die…now. Today, or tomorrow, or next week.
Soon.
Very soon.
Too soon.
Is this thought irrational? Of course it is.
Is this scenario possible?
You don’t want me to say it do you?
I’m sorry.
Yes.
And as unlikely as this scenario may be, it is, in fact, possible. So…it is in my mourning pipe and I am indeed smoking it.
Welcome to life everybody. If you weren’t awake before, may I suggest you do whatever it is that you need to do to open those eyes wider and sit up a bit straighter because whether you like it or not, this is going to happen to you someday, or to your best friend, depending on who decides to abandon who first, and you will not be prepared, cannot be prepared, how does one prepare?, for the loudest alarm clock, most heartburn inducing orange juice, most leaded cup of coffee of a wake-up call you will ever receive in your existence. I’m just sayin’, you might want to be ready.
So far what it means to me to lose my best friend is that:
I have the irrational fear that everyone else will be following her into the great beyond and I will drift aimlessly through the rest of my life never being able to create any new deep and meaningful relationships.
I have the desire to connect with every person who knew and loved her and speak to at least one of them every single day. Even if it’s an ex-boyfriend who I may or may not have insisted wasn’t good for her in life and persuaded her to leave time and time again.
I have more love and compassion for her family than I never knew was possible.
I still have my sense of humor, as evidenced by a few funny memories that I shared at her Memorial Service and several off color, and mostly inappropriate, jokes I have made since hearing of her passing. I’m sick. I can’t help it. The only saving grace here is that I know she loved me for everything that I was including my off-beat humor, so there.
[Oh, I’m sorry was I supposed to share one of my sick and twisted ideas? Fine.
There are many different styles of coping in life and when faced with the untimely death of your very best friend and soul mate at the UNripe age of thirty-six you ponder endlessly how you will survive the next thirty-six years without this person. Knowing that nothing and no one can every replace this person you have to get creative. This is what I came up with so far:
It crossed my mind that one way I could cope would be to cut out a life sized picture of my BFF’s friends face and then tape it to a stick and walk around with it in life. You know, sit with it at a restaurant, take it with me to Europe, that sort of thing. And I would call it “(my BFF’s name entered here) On A Stick”.
Not laughing? I didn’t think so. It’s really not funny, but when you are sleep deprived, bereft, confused, heartbroken, and going slightly mad…it might make you laugh for a second. Or not.]
What losing your best friend also means is that you have a whole new perception of life. You know why? Because you now have to envision a whole new world. One that you never thought was possible. Not because you thought it was IMpossible, but because you just never thought of it at all…why would you? You have to perceive of a world where you WON’T be raising your children together. You WON’T ever be her bridesmaid (or vice versa). You WON’T be going on double dates or camping weekends with your new boyfriends/fiancés/husbands. You WON’T be doing any of those things. No. Sorry. You won’t be doing ANYTHING with her. EVER. NOT EVER.
Never ever again.
This is what it means.
This is what it means?
To be continued...
This is what it means.
This is what it means?
To be continued...
“Don’t leave me waiting here. Lead me to your dooooor!”~The Beatles
