You lose a pair of earrings. You lose a piece of homework. You lose a piece of luggage that turns up, three weeks later, fresh from Singapore.
What is it to lose a person?
This is a very difficult thing to write, because in truth I am so inexperienced in loss. I lost a pair of earrings my brother had given me for my eighteenth birthday. I phoned up the shop where he had brought them, tracked down the jeweller and had a new pair made. I do not know what I will do when I lose something that I cannot replace.
Recently, my mother had a minor operation on her leg. It was nothing serious, but she was placed under general anaesthetic. The evening of the operation we drove her home, grumpy and with a cast over her leg. I was on holiday at the time. My brief stint at caring was a testament to my selfishness and to how lucky I am.
At the time, I was worried. I worried she might not wake up; that there might be complications. Sitting in that hospital waiting for her to come round felt like the most serious thing on earth.
Who am I kidding? I have friends whose parents have serious health conditions; parents in and out of hospital for six months; operations; intensive care; car accidents; cancer; mastectomy’s; a snapped Achilles tendon. Gather a group of your friends around you and I suspect you will discover the same. When you’re young, and I am, you have that strange sense of invincibility. But in fact you will soon realise people are always falling in and out of health.
When you’re talking to a friend whose dad has had cancer, it can make you embarrassed to be worrying about your mother’s minor operation or the fact that your dad fell of his bike last week. But I think it’s ok. It’s ok to care. Just because somebody else has suffered more than you, it does not mean you are not allowed to suffer. I’m not trying to tell you that Your Problems Are Important and You Matter a Lot, I’m trying to tell you that the fact that you are worried about somebody you love, for however minor a reason, is ok.
Dealing with friends who are going through this is difficult. Sometimes you hover uncomfortably, knowing they’ve probably confided their feelings to somebody else and are keeping you at bay. They might not talk about it, or shrug it off in a casual way, or keep it small-talk. I know somebody who informed me her grandparent was dead only when she texted me to ask me to pick up some English homework. At the same time, I sat with one girl for about forty minutes as she sobbed over a picture of her recently deceased grandmother while I patted her awkwardly on the back.
I think the best advice to come up with is to follow their lead. If they’re crying, then it’s best to comfort. If they talk to you and won’t stop just sit quietly; if they clearly don’t want to talk about it at all, then don’t push it. Polite questioning is nice, like: “how’s your mother doing?” and then listen, properly listen, and then make a judgement.
Patience is a virtue.
Everybody deals with grief differently. To you, one reaction – be it clam-like silence or a full on emotional meltdown – probably seems like the most obvious form of grief. But I have often found that an expression of grief is one of the most individual and personal acts of all. Watching somebody deal with loss can tell you a lot about them.
At the moment I’m listening to Nothing’s Going to Hurt You Baby by Cigarettes after Sex. It’s a sort of sad song. It’s mournful because beneath underneath it all you know the guy singing cannot really stop the hurt. Shit happens. People fuck up. People blow up. You are not a long-armed cricket and you cannot always save the people you love. And you can’t always stop the people you care about, especially your friends, from being hurt. I’m sorry. I truly am.
When the lights are off and I’m lying in bed in the dark, sometimes I find myself thinking about death. I worry about my grandparents, my brother, my parents, my friends. And then I stop myself. My trick is to always shift my thoughts to what I am going to wear in the morning. I remind myself of the promise of tomorrow.
You are young; I am too. If all things go to plan, then I predict life. Don’t worry about death, or loss. When the hurt comes, it comes. If your friend is a collapsed heap on the floor because her aunt passed, or her dad got a positive diagnose, or her gerbil died, then it’s your job to get down in the floor with her and help her. And if she doesn’t want to talk about and just wants to sit throwing hula-hoops in a Styrofoam cup then you just have to suck it up and sit with her and keep score.
Through your life you will lose things. You will lose your phone under a pile of crap under your desk and you will lose somebody you love for no reason whatsoever. But trust me when I tell you it’s going to be alright.
Nothing is ever truly lost. It’s just somewhere you don’t expect, waiting to be found.
words by Matilda Lloyd Williams
@matildalw_art