Life Is Different After The Death Of A Friend

Life is not the same after the death of a friend. The grief we must face requires a painstaking, crushing and painful process of reconstruction. This is due to the fact that this friend of the soul is often the only person to whom we were emotionally open and with whom reality was much more intense, enriching and complete.

Every loss we are forced to face throughout life is unique and exceptional. We know, for example, that our parents will leave us someday and that this emptiness will be desolate, but hardly anyone is prepared for that, let alone to assume that fate, the dark side of fate, can take a friend or friend with whom we can translate the most foolish ideas of our minds into words.

Harold Ivan Smith is an author specializing in this kind of grief, in this emotional and cognitive reconstruction that can overcome any loss. However, one of his best known books is “Grieving the Death of a Friend”. As the specialist explains to us, losing a friendship in a traumatic way, for many people, is synonymous with having to say goodbye to the only authentic, sincere and rewarding thing in their lives.

goodbye to a friend

We know that we are no more than brief passengers in this capricious, wonderful and, at times, terribly cruel world. Everything we had for sure could come crashing down like a house of cards overnight. Sometimes it’s an accident, and at other times it’s a terminal illness that forces us to see how our dear person slowly fades away in a tough battle.

Having to say goodbye to a friend or friend is something that is not taught. It’s like losing half of yourself and being orphaned. We’re groping in the dark knowing that there will be no more phone calls, dinners, getaways, coffees after work, books to share, movies to comment on and problems to vent between laughter and tears.

A fact that we must also keep in mind is that a part of the population that is usually affected by the death of a friend are teenagers. According to an article published by the magazine “All Psychology Careers”, almost 40% of young people have lost a friend or friend.

The most complex part of this reality is that, in general, they are very traumatic losses. We have to consider the high rate of suicides that are taking place among young people, devastating actions that have a strong impact on our sons and daughters. Given these realities, we need to be very intuitive, receptive and skillful when it comes to offering them support to manage these situations.

Strategies for coping with the loss of a friend

As stated by Harold Ivan Smith in his book “I mourn the death of a friend”,  one of the keys to gradually accepting the loss of this loved one is movement. Far from being quiet, paralyzed by the impact of this wound, it is essential to be able to cry, let off steam, remember, return to the places where we laughed and were happy, resume habits and integrate all these memories while allowing ourselves to open up to the world again.

It is also necessary to be very clear that each one of us will face grief in a different way, according to their particularities. Some will react with a great emotional release, others will however take a little longer and choose silence, a need for deeper solitude. Time and its needles sew these painful vital pieces together at their own pace.

The keys to grief in a friendship

Some keys to face the grief of a friendship are:

• : it is important to be fully aware of what this loss represents, to recognize that we will need time to retire to absorb what happened, to accept the emptiness, the absence… Allow your family to support you in this grief and, in turn, talk with your friend’s family to remind them who he or she was for you. In this way, the unloading of emotions is facilitated.

• Let this friendship and this memory be a gift to keep, to honor every day by returning to those moments of complicity and letting the person who is gone be a part of you as you come back to life again.

• . Whether we like it or not, we are going to start a new stage, completely different. We will return to our usual occupations, but something that can be positive is to start other habits, from which we can meet more people, create expectations again while letting this friendship that is already part of our being slumber in our hearts forever, part of our personal essence forever.

That soul friend is now our memory, our memory and that other half that smiles at us from a more serene place, wishing us the best.