Jess wrote this article in collaboration with her friend over at Her Campus at the Philadelphia University to share their story on the emotions they felt when they lost their dear friend. Check out her article here.
When you lose a friend, it will be a day like any other. It will be a Monday night, shortly before 10 p.m., and he will be going out to buy snacks. He will be a passenger in a car with four other students his age. It will be instantaneous.
You will not get the news until the next day, and you will not be prepared for what you are told. You will be in class when you check your phone and see a missed call from a friend — a friend who does not call casually on a Tuesday morning. You will text her asking if everything is okay. She will say no. She tells you to call her. And when you do, everything will fall apart.
She will tell you to walk outside, to find somewhere to sit. She will tell you what happened. She will say the words, “He didn’t make it.” You will think she is joking. You will not believe the words you are hearing because they are absurd and impossible and no, he is not gone.
You will never be able to walk past that bench without thinking of what you were told there.
You will stay on the phone with her until you get back to your dorm room. You will get there and thank God that your roommate is in class, because for the next three hours you are not human. All you are capable of doing is screaming and sobbing — all you can do is call your mom and tell her you’re coming home. You will receive an outpouring of love from people who have heard and who are worried about you, but you cannot respond. You cannot function. How can you function in a world without him?
When you lose a friend, you will buy a train ticket home for the next morning. You will travel for hours, and he will never leave your mind. You will cry the entire time, but it will not faze you when people stare, because they do not know what it is like to feel his loss. You will listen to music, and you will begin to associate songs with this time, and you will never listen to them in the same way.
When you lose a friend, you will reunite with the only people in this world who love him as deeply as you do, and you will not separate from them the entire time you’re home. Together you will go to his favorite places and talk about him, about his life and the memories you are left with. Each of you will write him letters, and you will put them somewhere special, in a place you know he would want them to be. You will feel him with you everywhere you go.
When you lose a friend, you will go to see his parents, and together you grieve over the love you have lost. They will let you into his room, the space that still smells like him, and they will let you take some of his things. You’ll take a sweatshirt and a necklace, things that you can wear to remind you of him. You will take a dream catcher because you know he will be the one to keep your bad dreams at bay. You will take the framed photo of the two of you that you gave him for graduation, the one he kept on his desk at school. In the photo, the two of you hold your high school diplomas, beaming, with your arms wrapped around each other. The frame around the photo says, “The Future is Yours.” You wish desperately that this phrase was still true.
His parents will take you to the place they are going to spread his ashes, and you will grow angry that he is in ashes when he was alive less than a week ago. You will hate the fact that he is gone when he should be there with you — whole, living, breathing. You need a hug, and the only person you want to hug is him.
When you lose a friend, you will overthink everything. You will hate that deer are stupid enough to run out in front of cars. You will think about what the coroner said, that he felt no pain when it happened — but you know that feeling no pain does not equate with feeling afraid, and you will hope to your core that he didn’t have to experience either. You will think about the unfairness of the situation, that he will never be older than 19, even as you grow older. You will count out the days until you surpass his age, and the date you circle on your calendar will inch closer every day.
When you lose a friend you will pour your focus into planning his memorial. You will put together a slideshow and a poster board covered in photographs. You will find a church to house hundreds of people, and you will buy candles and wallet-sized photos of him. You will greet people at the door, holding hands with your friends because without them you would fall apart. You will marvel at the strength of his family, their incredible ability to greet every single person who walks through the church doors. You will watch them speak about their son and you will hear love in their voices. You won’t have anything prepared, but you, too, will speak about him, about the hole that is left gaping in your heart.
When you lose a friend, you will have to return to school, because you cannot wallow in your grief forever. You will cry at random, and you will not be able to sit through classes. You will have to step out for air often. You will not be able to focus, and you will question why any of what you’re doing matters — why does writing a paper matter when someone you love has died?
But when you lose a friend, you will heal. Your despair will start to shrink and you will begin to feel like yourself again. The pain you feel will ebb, because you know inside that he would not want you to grieve for him forever. You will realize that talking about what happened helps, and you will find people to confide in. You will feel gracious for unexpected kindness, for the way friends ask how you are doing, for the way your classmates share their own stories and listen to yours. You will walk around and see things in a different way — you will see this world in a new light. You will feel him in the static in the air and realize, in a way, that he isn’t really gone.
When you lose a friend, your life will never be the same, but you will be okay.
All photos are author’s own.