On Deaths Effects on Friends:


I was reminded again this week about how when death comes closer to any one person in a group the dynamic changes for all involved.

I once had a friend. We were quite close. When her beloved grandmother died no one in our group came around her for awhile. I rushed right over to her house and held her hand, held her as she cried and helped her through it. (This was back in the day, you know pre-goth times. I wasn‘t outwardly goth back then. No one was.) Time past and kids grew. When my son died she actually said to me, “So what do you want me to do about it.” And she hung up the phone on me. She never showed at the funeral, not even a card. We haven’t talked since. Her mother died earlier this week. And even though I rarely ever miss the chance to go to a funeral, I did not go to this one. Some hurts run too deep.

The fear attached to death for some people is so great that they will let it destroy a good relationship before confronting it in any way. She had one less person to help her through the death of her mother because she couldn’t even bring herself to say “I sorry your kid died but I just can’t be there for you right now. Death scares me.” In the face of a death she did the unforgivable. She left a mother still in shock holding the phone with no one on the other end of the line, not twelve hours after the death of her first born. I hadn’t expected her to rush right over. I knew her fears. But I didn’t expect to be treated the way she treated me then.

I lost many friends the day my son died. Not because I was one of the crying miserable wretches that no one could stand to be around, because I wasn’t. It was because the death of a child was too much for them to bear. That was something they couldn’t even think about so my presents was intolerable. Others fell away when I got cancer. The thought of death of ones self needed to be run away from and me along with it.

The friends I have now are fewer but they are truer. Death does that to friendships, it tests them. Thank you Master Death for cutting away the baggage of shallow friendships.