How Do You Deal With A Friend’s Loss?
She calls you twice but you ignore her calls. Then you get a text message that reads ‘I lost my mum’. The world stops spinning as you stare at your phone. The sender is like a little sister who for some uncanny reason you owe a great deal.
You do not know how to respond or react so you call your mum and panic, in the process you find yourself crying. You summon courage and send a text. You call the next morning and chat about the biology exams she has. She is writing her Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination and you want her to focus as much as grief could allow her. You do not talk about her loss again even though you have called her every single day since you received the text.
This is one thing you are bad at. You do not know how to console people other than being there at the moment and hoping they want to rant about it. So you can listen and get some measure of the right things to say. Or be the one person that can help them not think about it.
To say the words I am sorry repeatedly makes you sound like a robot programmed with only those words. To say it is well is very difficult because you do not believe. Why say it is well when you know the person is grieving and should be allowed to process that grief without you trying to invalidate it in some way.
“God knows best”
“He has gone to a better place”
When your best friend in school lost her dad, it was very personal, so you screamed into the phone and started crying. The next time you called it was about burial arrangements and when that was done it was about legal processes for his entitlements. The only time you both let that mask of control slip was to talk and laugh about his annoying habits and food. This was in 2014 and till date you still don’t know how to broach the topic of his death- of her loss.
Another friend just lost his dad and you definitely do not know what to do. It is always like a dream until the grave is dug. You are already thinking of an excuse to give at work so you can be able to attend. You do not know if that would mean anything, but you just hope work would let you be. Losing someone is how life works. The cycle of life must run its course, even alchemy failed. In all the books you have read or movies you have seen. Death is truly never defeated. It always comes for you. That final silence. At least you wouldn’t know what is happening or so you think.
But when it happens to someone you love, there is a hole in your heart. A hole that even time cannot seal. One memory or the other it opens up again. That pang of pain that leaves your mouth open in a scream for a minute before the sound follows.
Dealing with loss or learning to console another might be one subject you never had a teacher for. You do not know if you are doing it right or wrong. But you know there is meaning and understanding in the silence and in the other weird ways you know. However the question ‘is it enough?’ would always haunt you.
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