i lost my best friend

a new mourning has dawned and nobody is talking about it

I am one of those women who thinks, if I am going through this and it sucks, hurts, is hard, *choose your own adventure here*, then it has to be for others. I have learned in my chorus of loss, to mostly lean on independence and resiliency — and sure, they have proven useful companions. I have even been praised for my fortitude and strength. Learning to put another and another log on the fire of resiliency to stoke my way forward has been my righteous blaze.

But, damn, if it isn’t lonely. I have beef with the pride we bestow upon one another for being resilient in the face of grief. I want to call bullshit on it as an “always useful default” for coping. It can be good, of course — and prove to be a painful mask for processing the grief and shame (and whatever else you tuck under the hood while you dead lift life above your head, with a million tons of resiliency on the bar). But, I digress.

Photo by Geordanna Cordero on Unsplash

Sharing some of my life queries and curiosities openly with other women, took me a while. I can see now that it came about when I kept meeting other motherless daughters in quiet corners of my life and realized we had so much in common. Putting my curious toe in the water of sharing, this phenomenon came up again and again. It felt downright immature in many ways. In our loss, perhaps this was the fall out of some arrested development? It is hard to know or see clearly when in the midst. It felt embarrassing and naked for me.

It showed up again when I miscarried, three times, along with the heartache and grief associated with my infertility. Then the dissolution of a 17 year marriage, divorced and dating for the first time at 40, HRT and menopause, empty nesting. These are the life changes, tumult and sage advice Mom had shared with me and my sister before she died suddenly at just 50. So much needed still, and left unanswered. I played “what would Ellen do”, and I also leaned on my best fiend.

Losing this best friend of 40 plus years, who was very much the kind of friend you need and depend on in a whole other and different way in motherloss, is a double-doozy. When she has known your Mom and shows up to share in some or most of the above since 1988 — there is ironically, and suddenly, nobody to talk to about it. It’s been six or seven-ish years now. (Grief math, not my strong suit). Resiliency soon became an island of isolation and silent suffering.

Back to the break up. I needed some paperwork for a Co-op board when we were buying a studio in the city. As I dug in, I realized the bank account had less than I knew, and our decade old, bestie-owned business needed a financial come to Jesus. Money talk is never comfy, but there it was. It was certainly spent on merchandise and business back stock - this was not embezzlement or something torrid, nor did we share a million dollar enterprise. I sent an email and asked for a call. It never came. Never.

I will keep the details of the particulars private. But a ping pong of emails and voicemails into a void, became our ending. We met on first fashion jobs. Our kids called us “Aunt” and still feel like cousins. It was and is and remains, awful. This is not to air dirty laundry. I read between the lines that something in my “new marriage” and our now living states apart had resulted in her not feeling a part of my life any longer. A part of the story I was not privy to, until “the break up”.

I never heard her voice again. What I have heard, are very similar stories from a handful of fantastic women you may all wish to have as friends, too. I thought on the heels of motherloss, that this may have felt different for me. This was the one person that knew my deepest truth. When I was exploring the idea of dating, she said - “I would marry you.” Our lives were intrinsically woven with gorgeous braids of hurts and wins and work creations that glittered with unimaginable beauty. The “me too” I have heard from other women as well as clients that are showing up for grief support with me, over friend loss, has me opening my own door. Again. I refuse to embrace the suck of this loss. I am making space and time to grieve the future I imagined with one another. We were going to be old ladies together. There are few who know the kind of history and kind of connection we shared outside of my own sister.

I don’t get to have the kind of closure I might have hope for or needed. A eulogy. A funeral. Sitting Shiva. I had only one wish when besties became partners—that our work never get in the way of friendship. Dad warned me this was never a good idea. He is the only sibling that did not join his family business. Again, this or money or a hundred other things may or may not be the reason, but I don’t really get to know. Some have said, it is none of my business.

I wonder often, if it may have come to this in or out of work life. Do we divorce friends too? One day we wake up and wiggle out of the familiarity that used to fit us so well? She was my cozy-cardigans-and-old-overalls-best-travel-pal-and-made-well-done-French-Fries-taste-like-the-best-meal-on-earth-girl. And, oh so very much more. Shit, we even started to look alike.

I often think I see her from afar now that I am back in town. Have the same urge to give her a buzz when I see something that I want to share, and my muscle memory reminds me that she is no longer on the other end. A new mourning has dawned.