Why can’t people understand that losing dear friends can hurt far more than losing family?
AT THIS time of year, it should be the most comforting of rituals — settling down to write Christmas cards to fond friends. ‘Must meet in the New Year,’ I usually inscribe as the pile of festive greetings grows beside me.
Sadly, however, for many in my address book, January drinks are no longer an option. Indeed, the Christmas card pile is becoming an ever sadder task as, each year, I find myself confronted by the number of friends who have died since I last got out my address book.
The death of a friend is an entirely different experience to that of a relative. With family members, you are usually aware of every twist of fate.
‘Not long to go,’ a cousin or nephew will tell you in advance of the moment an ailing relative passes. Even sudden, unexpected deaths are readily communicated between members of the clan.
As well as this, you know your place in the hierarchy of grief. The loss of a distant second cousin is likely to hit one less hard than that of a brother, say — and people know how to treat you accordingly.
There are certainties around the loss of a relative, peculiarly comforting in their own rather predictable difficulty. But the loss of a friend? Well, as I’ve discovered, this is entirely different. For while the loss of a relative is understood by society at large, and the corresponding painful emotions allowed for, losing a friend is all too often a grief that no one takes into account.
At 71, sadly, I’m becoming well seasoned in the death of friends.
A year ago, for instance, a former boyfriend died. While the romantic aspect of our relationship had petered out some time previously, we remained on good terms. I knew he was ill.
His family were aware of our relationship, but no one thought to tell me he had gone into a hospice, where he died two weeks later from an aggressive lung cancer. I learned of his death only when I received a letter from his solicitors saying he had appointed me as co-executor.
It didn’t end there. I wasn’t even given details of his funeral. Perhaps his ex-wife was afraid I would turn up. She, I can’t help but note, was immediately allotted a place in the hierarchy of grief because she was once his wife, whereas I was now ‘only’ a friend.
BEINgignored in such a fashion has only made my grief more profound. I would have dearly welcomed a chance to pay my respects and, all these months on, still don’t really feel I have said goodbye.
It’s made me look back on even the good times with some sadness. Was I as important to him as I thought? Deep down, I know I was — but being so excluded from the moment of his death has made me question what I once held as an absolute truth.
This wasn’t the only time I’ve noticed the tricky status of ‘friends’ of the deceased. It was only a chance email that allowed me to attend the funeral of a dear female friend of some 20 years, who died in July.
As she lived on the Isle of Wight, distance had recently kept us apart. But we remained close, last seeing each other at a Christmas party in 2015, where we spent hours laughing together.
I had no idea I would never see her again. Unbeknown to me, cancer was to carry her off in the matter of a few weeks.
Thank heavens, then, a neighbour of hers was also a friend of mine and happened to email, telling me of the death in time for me to attend the funeral. It meant so much to be given the chance to commemorate our friendship. If I hadn’t received that chance email . . . well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
I wasn’t so lucky when another old friend died last year. Though my details were in his address book, the first I knew was when I read his obituary in the newspapers.
To me, he was Bob, to others he was Robert Banks-Stewart, the TV scriptwriter responsible for such hits as Shoestring, Bergerac and The Darling Buds Of May. Indeed, Bob always maintained that he discovered Catherine Zeta- Jones, and who is to argue?
I was dearly fond of old Bob, and would have liked a chance to pay my respects. Instead, I missed his funeral and any chance to share my grief.
But today, it seems no one expects you to grieve for a friend in the same way as for a relative. For instance, if your grandmother dies, you’re permitted to have time off work to attend the funeral as ‘ compassionate leave’. But if it’s ‘just a friend’, there are no such formal allowances. Often, you are expected to soldier on despite the fact that, these days, friends often mean far more than distant relatives.
As the old saying has it, your relatives are foisted on you, but you choose your friends. And there’s usually good reason why they’re friends; you have things in common and you enjoy each other’s company.
There’s often a huge gap when they die. In a time when life can be increasingly fractured, when institutions like marriage hold none of the old certainties they used to, friends can be beacons of stability throughout the decades.
Even many years later, the loss of a close friend can leave a hole nobody else can quite fill. When children leave home or spouses die, friends step in to make life still feel worth living.
Despite the fact that several of my friends go back to primary school, long outlasting any romantic or intimate relationship, I can’t help but wonder if anybody will let me know when they die.
Sadly, I doubt it. As seems to be the pattern, I will probably just discover it all gradually, with mounting dismay, as emails and other forms of communication go unanswered.
Indeed, Christmas cards are still arriving in my letterbox for the previous occupant who died at least eight years ago. Presumably these are from friends who have never been told of her death.
At my age, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised when death strikes. Though it has become a regular part of my life, however, it still feels difficult to convey how profoundly you can grieve a friend.
I even upped sticks and moved to escape the memories of friends I have lost. In 2008, when I was living in Worthing on the South Coast, almost my entire social circle was wiped out in a year.
As well as being close friends, they were, or had been, colleagues, too, and so we had plenty to reminisce about when we met. I would often celebrate Christmas or New Year with them. All of us used to live in London but for one reason or another had moved to the coast and so formed a sort of ex-pat community.
I felt I could not stay in Worthing as it had become too closely associated with misery and death. I sold up and went to Oxford.
Here, I did not experience such a series of losses until this year, when more of my friends began to die in droves.
Contrary to common thinking, I think the older a friend is, the harder it is to accept their death. How can you imagine life without someone who has been such a long fixture?
THEother week I learned two more friends had died. One was 89 and the other was 92, and the loss will be as keenly felt as if they were much younger.
To make matters worse, I heard of their deaths through the impersonal medium of Facebook. But that seems to be how things are going these days. It’s hardly a fitting way to mark someone’s end, among the virtual detritus of funny cat videos and celebrity gossip, though, is it?
Each time I am forgotten in the aftermath of a friend’s death, I think back to what we did when my partner, John Sandilands, died suddenly in 2004.
His ex- wife, ex- partner and myself got together and went through his address book and our own address books to find contact details for as many friends (and enemies!) as we could.
We were determined everyone would have the opportunity to pay tribute and sent letters, phoned or emailed more than 100 people between us. Most came to his memorial.
We even wrote to those who were no longer on speaking terms with John. In death, they forgave him for real or imagined hurts, and attended the wake. All was levelled with the passing of somebody who could be an awkward sod, but was also held in much affection.
Friends who could not make it sent cards or letters, which I still treasure. All in all, it was a good send-off. But unless we had made the effort to inform everybody, it could not have happened.
So I would say to families, when one of your number dies, please, don’t forget the friends, or even the exes. For they also made the deceased’s life what it was.
They, too, are owed the chance to grieve, rather than being excluded or forgotten.