Losing him felt like I was living in a dream sequence...

He is dead. The words sound so final, so cold. Somehow I can’t bring myself to believe it. Somehow I felt I am not suppose to lose people I love- I am too young (Don't laugh.) As a child, I remember friends of my parents dying, but even though, I am at the same age as they were, I don't feel old enough to lose people. I did not want to believe it. As if his survival depended on my accepting of his death. I was in denial.  Oh, I know about the grieving process and all the stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, but knowing it and experiencing it is different. You don't stop in the middle of your pain and say 'yeah, this is one of the stages.' You just want the pain to go away. Losing him felt like I was living in a dream sequence, for which, a part of me kept expecting to wake up and hear that it was a joke, that someone had played a trick on me, and the next time the phone rang it would be him at the other end.

However, at some time after the funeral, it hit me. He is dead. He is gone.  I will never see his face, hear his voice, laugh at his jokes or loved by him again. The pain is unbearable. I could not talk to anyone at all. It was a great help to be with room full of people who loved and appreciated him. It also allows me not to think about the terrible things that has happened to me, and spent each moment thinking that although it is horribly painful, it is not unbearable, and I am relieved that I am able to function and to smile when I see people. I knew many of his friends and his father but not the rest of his family. Those who knew my relationship with him expected me to fall apart and others were grateful that I did not.

The physical as well as the emotional pain was unbearable. What makes it so sad is, if he was a family member - even the ones I am not close to, people would have offered me sympathy. But, he was 'just a friend.' Tosh, he was like a brother to me, but nobody cared. Society, not only expected me to carry on but they thought it was strange that I feel so much grief about his death. I hear people talking behind my back, wondering if he was my boyfriend, instead of a friend like I said he was or if I have been in love him. I wanted to scream at them 'I loved him. Do you have a problem with that?' But I knew, if I opened that door, I would not stop there.

We live in a world with rigid ideas about love and affection. We have social etiquette and rules. The inflexibility of these rules, though, ignores some realities. Who are we to decide, who should be mourned and by whom.  In many communities, when there's a death, friends and neighbors come to console the bereaved.  The bereaved gets company, food, sympathy.  However, most people don't think about the depth of the loss when it is a non-family member. There are rituals for dealing with the death of a spouse and a family member, but there are none for the death of a best friend - even though the pain can be just as intense and the loss just as big.

Friends are special. The love I feel for a close friend is different from a love relationship but it is not less meaningful. I love my friends the same as I love my siblings.  Unfortunately, society does not value or give us the kind of support that they would have given us if we lose a family member or a lover. The sad truth is losing a friend is not uncommon, it is just not often acknowledged, and the pain is rarely discussed. No matter how you lose a friend, it hurts and leaves a deep hole in your life. The loss needs to be respected and given the same credence as the loss of any loved one. It hurts just as much to lose a best friend.