On May 23, one of my closest friends decided to take her own life. At the time of writing this, it’s been about one month since Laura made her way out of my life. I figured by the time I got the strength to talk or write about her I’d feel better. Instead I feel worse.
When I first got the news of her passing I was fine for a couple of days. Then, as is the nature of grief, it hit me like a brick… after I had convinced myself that I was stronger than the typical cycle of grief. I believed that the initial shock and horror of it all would die down after a week or two, after I let myself come to terms with the fact that I’d never hear her Dennis Reynolds impression again, or get to stay up on the phone as Laura took hours to figure out which Enneagram type best fit my new yearly persona.
As I sit here and reflect, I know the shock of the news has worn off and I’ve almost made my peace knowing that I’ll never hear her voice or share a laugh with her again. The sadness that she left me with has evaporated, now all I feel is anger.
Anger for leaving me before she could type me again, anger for leaving me to be the sole carrier of our friendship and the eras of our lives we led together, and most of all, anger for leaving when she promised to get lunch with me.
But the longer I sit with that anger, the more I realize it isn’t anger at all. Or at least, it isn’t only anger.
I’m angry because she broke a promise. I’m angry because she left without warning. I’m angry because she handed me a lifetime of memories with nowhere left to put them. Every joke we shared, every story that we confided in one another, every version of ourselves that existed side by side now lives entirely in my memory. No one to call and ask if she remembers, no one to confirm our connection happened exactly the way I remember it.
The cruel thing about losing someone isn’t just that they’re gone. It’s that the future disappears with them. I wasn’t just expecting lunch with Laura, or another late night phone call. I was expecting years of them. Expecting years of freakishly good impressions, personality tests, ridiculous anecdotes that only she could have experienced, and all other ordinary moments that seemed guaranteed since she was here.
Maybe that’s what grief really is? Mourning not only the person you lost, but every version of the future that was left with them. And despite all my anger, despite every selfish part of me that wishes she had stayed, I know that my anger only exists because I loved her and knew the joy of being loved by her. If she had been a stranger, her absence would not feel like an open wound. It hurts because she mattered. It hurts because she was woven into the fabric of my life so tightly that removing her feels like the most brutal sisyphean task.
A month later, I still don’t know what to do with that.
All I know is that I miss my friend.
