Nothing had ever felt as seismic as Kate’s death, when life showed me its teeth and claws

Early in the new year of 2019, I couldn’t get hold of my friend Kate. This was unusual: she’d always been great at keeping in touch, but I assumed she was too busy catching up with her family, who she’d been visiting in Cumbria over Christmas. Back in London, I met up with some of our mutual friends for lunch. None of them had heard from Kate either. I remember feeling vaguely uneasy. But I reasoned that I was rubbish at responding to messages myself, so why shouldn’t Kate take a break from her usual efficient self?

The following morning, my friend Emma called me. Her voice sounded weird when I answered. She was very careful and kind in how she told me, but shock makes you stupid, and for a while I couldn’t grasp what she was saying.

I heard her tell me that Kate had been in a car accident just after Christmas, and that she was in hospital. I was picturing Kate bored and annoyed with her leg in a cast, even as I heard Emma say the words ‘life support’.

I was still planning when we could all go up to visit her while Emma was telling me that there was nothing to be done, that Kate’s life support was going to be withdrawn. Poor Emma, patiently laying out this terrible sequence of information for me while we both waited for my brain to catch up. Then it did, and I was crying so much my boyfriend rushed in from the next room, and Emma was crying again too. We divided up our closer friends between us in order to do the telling, and then I started making calls as well.

Kate died on 4 January, when her life support was withdrawn. She was 39 years old. Nothing has been the same without her.

Kate and I first met as English teachers at the same school. I was still training back then, and she was my mentor, which meant she was pretty much forced to become my friend because she had to spend so much time with me.

When I finally qualified, I baked her a cake in the shape of herself to say thanks, which ended up being less flattering than I’d intended because I’m not a very good baker.

Here are some things I’d like you to know about Kate. She was funny. She dressed really well – and knew how to pull off culottes. She had great hair, a short bob that always looked on trend. She had beautiful handwriting. She was passionate about literature, but never pretentious. She was always up for adventure, even agreeing to come to Lisbon with me one time (pictured) so I could hook up with a handsome Israeli I met on Tinder.

She could be fearsome. She disliked hypocrisy, and she would not lie, even to make her own life easier. I think this quality is best described as

‘moral courage’ and I’ve seen it in other people, but not to the same extent. She had a genius for friendship, and took people as they came. She had many close friends, and a close family. A lot of people suffered from her death.

As others have probably discovered, contrary to what Victorian literature tells us, grief does not necessarily make you into a nobler person.

I think I was slightly unhinged for a while, because I remember going on long walks and listing in my head all the people I knew who I’d rather had died instead of Kate. I don’t know if this is a normal thing to do, but hopefully none of my acquaintances will take it personally that I was ruthlessly trying to bargain away their lives. This stage passed, in any case. You lose who you lose, and of course it isn’t fair.

I was one of those lucky people who, prior to this, hadn’t experienced much serious adversity. I’d had to reckon with the deaths of grandparents, a bout of depression, a bad break-up or two, but nothing had ever felt as seismic as Kate’s death. This was the moment life showed me its teeth and claws. It made me grow up, but not in a way I wanted to.

The injustice of it stung badly. I felt grief for myself, for Kate’s family and her other friends, but especially for Kate herself: that she had had so much living left to do, and she had been robbed of it.

It’s shocking to think it’s been four years already since she died. I was working on a book at the time, and I dedicated it to her. I like the idea of strangers reading her name at the front. I still think about her a lot, and I find myself imagining conversations with her. I have so much to tell her. I married the boyfriend I introduced to her the year before she died. We had a baby. More often though it’s not the big things I want to discuss with her, but smaller things, like a book I’ve just read that I’m certain she’d enjoy, or a film I’d like her opinion on. Sometimes I tell her that I miss her. I think I always will, even as the years go by and I get older while she stays the same age. My brilliant friend. Kate. I miss you.

I’m Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait is published by Riverrun and available now. Rebecca is donating her fee to UN Women – a charity that Kate supported – and their Emergency Appeal for Women and Girls in Afghanistan (unwomenuk.org/campaigns/afghanistan)