My friend calls and for the first time in our friendship, and we have been friends for more than 25 years, I hear panic and tears in her voice. I instantly know this is not good news, and I also know the phone call will not do, I have go to her, but she is 1.5 hour away and I’m in the middle of cleaning the house, and in desperate need of a shower. She tells me her father, living overseas, has just passed away. I know the agony of being so far away as this is happening, I had a similar phone call from overseas not long ago. I know how the ground is pulled underneath you and you feel like falling, and things are upside down, out of control, and your father is in another plane of existence now, unreachable, gone, if only you could have helped him stay alive. Why do we always go there? Why do we ever think we can change such things, if only…
I know nothing will do. The tears will calm for a few hours as she arranges her travels but they will come back, and she will feel the cold darkness creeping in her insides as the night nears. I want to be there with her. And I remember how I didn’t cry at first when I heard, I remember sitting there, asking my sister who shared the news on the phone ‘why?’, a meaningless, unanswerable question directed at nothingness. Yet she humored me in her grief with an attempt to answer. I remember just sitting down in the darkness. Lost, punished, lonely. Then I heard my husband come down the stairs, someone had woken him up to let him know. I might have cried then. And later I couldn’t stop the shaking for it was dark and I was cold, so very cold, I wouldn’t be able warm myself that night even with all the blankets and robes and my husband’s arms around me…
I go to her, and others also show up and we sit with our masks with windows open. My dear friend even in her grief is generous with us; giving us all the details of what happened, asking us if we need anything, only at the first contact with each of us her tears join us momentarily. We want to ease the pain of loss for this beloved person, and yet we know none of us can make it right. Then Sofi comes, another friend, from 5-6 hours away. I’m in awe of the friendship of those two; they’ve been friends a few years longer than we have, and I see the bond, the love, and the care emanating from Sofi as she enters with her vibrant energy. And having lost her dad at 16, she is one of the early members of the club. Others leave, reluctantly, but the two of us, Sofi and I, stay (we all have been carefully isolating) with her. For the next 2 days, until she boards on the plane, she receives a bunch of phone calls, puts her affairs in order till her return, and then the three of us cry, laugh, take vitamins, Sofi massages her, I make us tea, and we cry again, but laugh too, we pray each, in our own way and we all are grateful for the presence of others and the chance to share grief.
When it’s time for her to go to past the check point at the airport, and I start driving home, the traffic is cleared, the sun is setting by the ocean, and life presents itself with all its beauty and glory. I drive in silence, pull my window down feel the soft breeze, and at every red light I watch the ocean and the sky. I’m glad to be alive I think, as tears fall down my face. My friend is heart-broken and I’m so sorry. And I miss my father. I miss being his daughter. But you see, life is a cycle and it is so much more complex than we could ever imagine. Or maybe it is just too simple, you live, you love, you die. But the endings are only beginnings. I now have a different relationship with my father in his absence. It is not just the memories, but I carved out a presence within me for him. That is what happens after loss, you become more, you expand, you make space in your heart and place the departed there and then you invite the whole world in, so it feels festive, open, joyful…
❤️❤️💕