Tuesday, October 7, 2008

This is the End, beautiful friend.

I am just so sad today. I never wanted to use this blog as a personal outlet of emotion, but today I am so blank and verging on tears that I can only share.

He wasn’t a close friend. He wasn’t even a good friend. But I’ve known him for more than ten years and when he came off his motorbike and lost his life it hit me harder than I thought. We used to hang out in the park eating two minute noodles on a Friday night.

I feel sneaky and opportunistic feeling like this and writing about it when we weren’t close, and when his good friends, let alone his family, must be feeling things that I can’t even begin to imagine. But I feel it and I feel it more heavily than I have felt many things.

A loss cauterises immaturity, it is a tidal wave on the smouldering coals of anger and hurt, and it is a loving rope that binds us who are left.

I fear now more than ever for those I know and love. Loss makes cowards of us all but it makes us bear the unbearable too. I think of his family and what they will have to carry and I am so achingly, guiltily, searingly sad for them and glad it isn’t me. Loss makes us selfish and we grip tighter to our own.

I am so sorry. I am so sad. I am thinking of you and your family and your dog and your friends and your last moments and I break to think of what they were. I am so sorry.

3 comments:

x said...

I'm sorry to hear of your friend's death, Rachel. A person I knew but was not close to died a few years ago, it felt odd to be upset but at the same time I couldn't pretend like it meant nothing to me. I wish you all the best

xox

Lizzy said...

I'm so sorry, Rachel.

Miss T said...

Thanks guys. It's very strange to be so raw yet feel so guilty, as though it would feel less guilty to feel less upset ... the heart is an odd master. I heard also today of a great tragedy affecting colleague, and I suppose in a very sad sad way it was a reminder that we are all touched by grief at some point - one of the things that binds us all together. I do feel much better for writing though, and for reading your comments. Thank you :)
R