Story 1: Death of a friend

Ignoring emotional baggage

I was on a bus, already nearly home returning from Japan, when my mother called me to tell one of my closest childhood friends had died while I was away. Before I got home, he was already buried. I didn’t get to experience all the proper emotions then, and to this day, I still haven’t. I think missing his burial was the biggest thing that set me back from dealing with it.

If you think about it, a funeral is held for you, so you could move forward. I’m not a religious person, I have resigned from the state cult a long time ago. However, I do think we all need some spirituality when it comes to death. Death is too powerful to handle alone, and the older you get, the more you feel connected to death aswell. Most of us respect the tradition of burial and go into these events without question, out of respect for our parents at least. I started to understand the importance of letting go only after missing my friends funeral.

There’s not much to say about what happened to him. It was a late night car crash. All the details are not clear to me, so be it. My parents believe it was an accident, and I have refused myself to think otherwise. I’ve been stuck on the matter of what really happened and why, to say the least. If he wanted to harm himself, it would only make his death worse for me to accept if I knew.

It’s been almost seven years. I wrote and recorded a song about my own feelings right after. Since that, I think I’ve just ignored the thing ever happened. I remember drunkenly texting his younger siblings I would always support them in life if they needed anything. They answered TY. But that interaction still kind of makes me feels like I managed to do somthing at least.

I sometimes think about our childhood when I visit my parents and go on a walk on the memory lane. We were both very school oriented kids and football was our shared passion. We hanged out often, because we lived near each other. We walked to school together all year. In winter we jumped into the icy ditches to break the ice sheets on the shallow streams. We wondered around on our way back from school, we never hurried back home. I really liked being with him and those are the times I enjoy remembering.

After the elementary school we went to the same high school and still shared the same friends. We often drove back home together when we got our drivers licenses and listened to Foo Fighters in his car. Those times generated such blissfull and calm memories. And on the surface, we were the same old friends still. Maybe our connection was a bit severed, maybe we weren’t so close anymore. People change that way, and sure, we separated a little. I was dating, I stopped playing football. And we moved to different cities later and we stopped communicating. I’m sure all of us have had friends like that.

I do get stuck on the philosophy of him being dead. I sometimes feel that my friend already closed his Netflix and I’m still watching the credits. We are headed to the same direction, how much more can I do with my time now? To me, the many happy illusions of the future died with him. If he can die, so could I, and I’m here to experience how the world goes on without him. If he knew how little anything changed, he would smirk. Let’s admit, it’s like he never fucking existed.