It was about two years ago now that my friend Ed unexpectedly passed away from heart failure. I had been meaning to write a big long blog entry about my experience dealing with the loss and grief, that was going to be all meaningful and insightful, but I’ve come to realize that I am certainly not capable of imparting any wisdom on the subject of losing a close friend, other than this:
Grief isn’t always noble.
I had always thought it was. I mean, surely when someone dies, being upset about it is a rational response, unlike the pain you go through when some jerk you were dating dumps you. In that case, the rational response should be joy, but it never is, because you’re not rational. But I had this mistaken belief that you ended up on the other side of it all with a silent grace, as you stare into the sunset with a meaningful look on your face, and as the violins play a lament and the image fades to credits. Stupid Hollywood.
There are a few reasons why grief’s not noble, or at least, not noble in my case.
It’s all about me.
I can’t help but think about what I’ve lost, personally, because of Ed being gone. I feel as if all those memories I have of us hanging out together, from high school into adulthood, have no more meaning because I’m the only person to remember them now. That, in itself, is partial bullshit anyways, since we didn’t spend all that much time just the two of us, and there are others who were around for all the fun. But still, the collective memories in the context of him and me now only reside in my head, and that doesn’t feel like enough. I’ve lost a bunch of ‘Hey, remember that time’s.
It’s just not fair.
I’ve never managed to stop being mad that he died. I mean, it doesn’t keep me up at nights or stop me from getting work done, but nothing short of armageddon or World War III is going to make me think that him being gone from the world is a good or okay thing. Ed volunteered like mad, tried to be friends with everybody (even those he shouldn’t have bothered with), went on three or four vacations a year, was ridiculously cheerful despite whatever crap was thrown at him, and embraced life more than anyone I’ve met before or since. It’s just not fair.
I wish I could’ve taken meaning from his death to carpe diem and be happier and all that, but that’s just not in my nature. I’m not all that morose, but I’m not a bundle of joy either, and I don’t quite get why I’m still around if he’s not, since if he were me he’d certainly be doing more with himself and having way more fun. So much for that avenue of thought.
The day of finding out he died left a bad taste in my mouth.
I was at work, working and talking with friends, and a girl from my high school I’d recently rediscovered (maybe from Facebook) messages me on MSN and asks if I remember this guy from our class named Ed. She’d found out from another one of his friends that he’d died, and she thought she was passing on the news to someone equally distant from him.
It’s entirely ridiculous, but I haven’t been able to be friends with her, because whenever I think of her I’m reminded of that morning and what she told me. Dumb, I know. It’s not like she had anything to do with it, and she’s certainly a nice enough person.
After I heard the news I took a sick day. I went home and spent the afternoon going through my high school annuals and various gifts Ed had given me over the years (he was very generous). That evening my boyfriend showed up, I thought to comfort me, but after an hour or so he got sick of my talking so much about not him and suddenly threatened to break up with me. In retrospect it was obviously narcissistic and controlling, but at the time it worked, and I spent the rest of the evening (and the next half year) apologizing for not being a good girlfriend.
That was not a good day, and it was the start of a very bad year, but I hate that these bad memories are attached to my memories about Ed, since he was the antithesis of them.
I regularly get dreams where Ed shows up.
It’s kind of creepy, because in these dreams he’s there, but I know he’s dead, so I tend to approach him and get mad at him for being dead or for leaving everyone. These dreams especially suck, though, in that it’s not really him there anyways, since if it were he’d be laughing and cheering me up and having a good time, and instead he’s sort of a shadow person who never answers any of my questions or accusations and just drifts away. And then I wake up feeling shitty and/or disturbed.
Obviously he’s some symbol in my imagination, for loss or unhappiness or a feeling of having no control over life, but it does hurt, and I’m surprised he hasn’t left my unconsciousness. He still shows up, once every few months. Maybe it just hasn’t been long enough since he died.
I guess what I have learned about all of this is that you don’t just get over the death of someone close, or you don’t necessarily do so. I would’ve thought two years was enough time for me to be settled into the Acceptance stage without jumping back into Anger from time to time, even passively. Maybe it’s a testament to Ed that he affected my life so much that his death bothers me now, but I know he wouldn’t have wanted it that way, because he never wanted to hurt anyone.
I think that if he hadn’t been so annoyingly nice, I might’ve had an easier time of it, but I’m not going to blame him for that, because I am still better off having known him. In that thought, I am happy.
