Never hesitate to send that message – you may not get the chance again
I’ve lost two friends unexpectedly in the same number of weeks, although when I say “lost” I mean they’ve died. Death is quite bad enough without us talking about it like American undertakers. “Passed away” is a bit coy, too, and it does those who’ve gone a disservice, as if it were a quiet, passive act they chose to do one afternoon between lunch and tea, instead of a brutal sledgehammer of a thing that nobody wanted.
Still, I can hear echoes of Lady Bracknell: “To lose one may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness.” My friend Vix would laugh at this, I hope, since when we were 16 we starred in a Wilde play at school, although she starred more than me. Vix was naturally dazzling and went on to study acting at Rada.
Both she and Pete were too young and I’ve spent recent days swinging from tears to laughter, trying to remember everything I can about them. Memories are helped, these days, by the material we can trawl through within seconds. I’ve scrolled back down my phone’s photo gallery, through our WhatsApp conversations and their Instagram profiles, screenshotting everything so these digital keepsakes are safely stored and can’t simply vanish. Is this ghoulish? I sit and reread my messages, stunned that only a matter of days ago Vix and I were discussing a walk on Hampstead
Heath. Pete’s last message to me was a joke I didn’t understand about a footballer, followed by two laughing emojis. But I’d rather have these mundane exchanges than not, a reminder that their last weeks were normal, right up until they weren’t.
One evening, possibly after too many glasses of wine, I went through Vix’s Instagram profile again, liking every picture I hadn’t before and berating myself that I’d overlooked the photos when she posted them. Part of me felt like a moody teenager; more of me was just glad to have the pictures.
Another friend has printed off old Facebook shots of us dating back to university, and my sister suggested compiling a “memory book” – the digital sort that people usually fill with holiday photos – so Vix’s small daughters can look back through it in due course. Yes, we’re all on our phones too much, and 93 per cent of my photo gallery is of food, but if documenting every fried egg we ever eat also means we have more snaps of the people in our lives, then I’m in favour.
Admittedly, technology has made some of us worry, too. Can one text immediate condolences to family members or should it be saved for a letter? Is it flippant to email, as if getting in touch with a colleague, because you want to spend time writing this letter but know it won’t be sent for several days yet? Actually, if I’ve learnt anything from the past few weeks, it’s not to hesitate over that message. If in doubt, send something, be in touch. You can send a few words of love to someone as soon as they need it and also post a letter. Plenty of us grumble about the ills of tech and social media, but I’ve been very grateful for it in the past couple of weeks. I cling to the pictures, those of us still here have messaged one another constant support. It has its purposes.