Living with Grief

I almost made it to my thirties without having experienced extreme tragedy.

In the last year of my 20s, I lost a best friend. Someone I grew close with at the restaurant we both worked at. She was a chef. I was a server. We first bonded in the bathroom, over running/biking to work, and all the preparation it entails. I lost her shortly after losing another coworker, our head chef. He was a great man and I respected him deeply. He was only in his mid thirties when he died. The best friend I lost was in her early twenties. Both died, far too young, from the same cause. Addiction.

What happens in a once relatively unmarked life when tragedy suddenly becomes part of the narrative? I cannot speak for others, but I can speak for myself, now having been rocked not once but twice by this incomprehensible thing, in rapid, gut wrenching succession.

First and foremost, I have learned that death both brings some people closer…and drives others apart. The close friend I lost, I’ll call her “K,” was a young, tenacious woman who worked hard to hold her own in a field dominated by men. We became close friends fast and were known for always being together. She was brilliant, but modest. When asked where she went to college she’d say “a small school in the finger lakes of upstate New York,” instead of just “Cornell.” She’d feed all her favorite people gummy worms, and sometimes come up with different names and stories for the creatures. Friends of hers knew if they wanted a sip of her cranberry juice to ask for a taste of the dragon blood. She’d squeak loudly like a mouse to get a laugh from friends or to showcase when she, in her words, "felt like prey" in a "predator's world." She didn’t trust many people so she never just said “hi” to be polite. She wore black and a scowl on her face most of the time, but I was privy to her smiles and warmth, that most people didn’t see. And it was the sunniest and sweetest glow. She told me she is very choosy with her friends, so I felt grateful to be one of them.

Then, after copious deliberation (including talk of requesting a resume/application), she and I agreed to open up our duo to let another person in, also from the restaurant. An amiable guy new to Boston, eager for friendship. Let's call him C. We started hanging out with C almost every night. We all had in common that we felt a need to let off steam after a long day, and get some grub. Having C around was nice. He made us both laugh, and it felt a little safer eating at certain male-packed places in Chinatown with a guy by our side. When I spoke my order in Spanish at El Jefe’s Taqueria, C smoothed over my accidental word slurs, like when I tried to say camarones (shrimp) but accidentally said cabrones (male goat/bastard). We ate out together so much that we joked that we’d start a food blog, rating and comparing various late night food places in Boston. We sacrificed sleep on many a night, for good food and camaraderie.

When we all lost our coworker, C and I took turns being there for K. She was already in a very vulnerable state beforehand, so we knew that when she lost one of her favorite people, her risk for instability would increase tenfold. And it did. I spent the first night we found out about our head chef's death sitting in the Emergency Room with her. When I needed to sleep after that and visit other friends who loved him, C took “a shift.” We were all grieving, but we were also all in it together.

You could say C and I experienced some disagreements before K died. We disagreed on how to approach K’s difficulties-her struggle with self harming, reckless behavior, and addiction. I took a harm reduction approach, as a prior addiction counselor, believing that people won’t drastically change unless that motivation comes from within. C disagreed with me in my approach, he took a zero tolerance stance.

Apparently he wasn’t the only one who disagreed with my approach, because I found out that a friend of K’s convinced her to block me, in addition to many other people in her phone. She told me that she purged a lot of her phone contacts after visiting home, but I had no idea that I had been one of them. I didn’t find out until I texted her and C later about hanging out, and only got a response from C, telling me he was too tired and that K wouldn’t see my message because I’d been blocked.

I felt shunned from a friend group that I helped form.

The following night, K unblocked me and apologized about it. She told me that she was going to rehab but she hoped we could meet up again on another night before that.

I was hurt that the blocking even occurred in the first place. To me that meant she’d been effectively convinced I was a negative influence. I thought she knew me well enough to know that I would never do anything to cause her harm. Everything I did or said to her was done through the intention of protecting her, in the ways I knew how from my training as an addiction counselor. So, out of hurt, I texted her "things will never be the same." But I also added that we could meet up sometime in the morning so we could talk things out. That day never came. Three days later, K died.

When I first heard the news, I went numb. No tears were shed, not at first. The waterworks didn’t come till later. I guess I thought I was already prepared for it. I knew she was at risk. Somehow though, I never thought she’d actually die. I couldn’t fathom it, truly.

Right after I received a call with the news, I headed to work. Tears flowed from my eyes on the journey, but I remained in control of my bike and my emotions aside from that. It wasn’t until the following day that it truly hit me. I was unable to remove myself from bed. All I wanted was another minute with her. I would never be able to hear her squeak again, or squeal with delight upon seeing a cute animal. It tore me up, more than ever before in my life.

I thought mourning K was the only thing I’d be able to focus on the month after she died, but that was sadly optimistic. Out of the blue, I received a phone call from a friend (who also knew K), informing me that someone was trying to start an investigation against me. I was advised to call off the funeral I was planning to hold for her. I was also texted “there are people who want to and are capable of harming you. That will turn you into a shadow of yourself.”

I was scared out of my mind. I could barely sleep. All I was trying to do was mourn a dear friend, not worry about getting put behind bars or physically harmed. I didn’t even know what those vague threats meant. I wasn’t sure if I should expect to be jumped in the middle of the night or have the cops pound down my door and handcuff me, saying “you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you.” K had told me everything before I was blocked, were people scared I knew too much? That I would point fingers if they didn’t silence me first?

I filled all my housemates in on the situation and asked everyone to lock our doors after that. One of my housemates was dating a guy who ran away scared, saying “No one should have to put up with this,” after he was clued in on the danger. I agreed, no one should have to. But that was sadly the reality, and I hadn't asked for it, going from laid back to vigilant in the span of a day.

I still held a memorial for her at my place that all were welcome to come to. I wasn’t going to let threats stop me from providing a space to honor her, for those that wished to. I knew there wouldn’t otherwise be one on the east coast, so far from her family.

Luckily, those who came were well intentioned people who all felt both affection and sadness for K. The entire pastry team showed and baked for it. We ate Afghani food that my housemate cooked because I knew they bonded over their interconnected cultures. We listened to a playlist of songs I made, all inspired by K, even the parts of herself she tended to hide, like her Bollywood influenced childhood. But my favorite part was when we all took to the outdoors and sat around a bonfire, sharing memories of her. It was a bonfire she had previously sat around to make her first s'more. She was so excited that day, as was C, who also experienced his first s'more with her.

I felt her presence there with us at the memorial, listening to the fond memories people had of her. She was a quiet person, but always hungry for gossip, especially when it involved her. Though she kept herself hidden in the shadows, I know she longed for respect and admiration. Two things she sadly, rarely got. But all the people who showed for her proved that she had left a legacy after all.

I spent hours scrolling through all my texts with K after she died, and forwarded some of them to C that I thought he’d want to see, like how thankful she was for her friendship with us. I asked if he wanted to meet so we could reminisce. He was the only other one I knew who spent as much time with her as I did, and loved her dearly. But he wanted to focus on serious stuff, like figuring out where she kept her storage. Later, I was asked to stop contacting him so he could move forward and put the deaths behind him.

I’ve been doing the opposite. Unfortunately for my housemates, I only just took down the photos of K I put up for her funeral. I’m about to get a leopard tattoo that K, C, and I talked about getting together, to represent all our leo signs (just without the dot that would've represented C). The third book in my trilogy is inspired by my perspective of what happened to K to cause her death, as well as some of the aftermath. I bring up K casually in conversations, because I don’t want her memory to be forgotten. That is how I cope. If I bring her up, it’s okay. You don’t have to freeze.

Is death the opposite of life? To me they seem interconnected, but I guess most opposites do. K drew me a picture I still have up in my room with the words “I linger in the sands of time,” as well as “the descent of the amorphous.” That girl was obsessed with transcending life every day that I knew her. She believed our souls were interconnected, and sometimes met, on different astral planes. I sure hope that's true. Her last Instagram caption was “just a useless trash can deactivating itself,” but sadly I didn’t see this till after she died.

With death comes accusations, and guilt, and cruelty. It can get nasty. I’ve experienced it personally, but I am not the only one.

The important thing for me is to carry on through the ways I want to live. In the Russian roulette that is life and death, I am still in. And I don’t want to take that for granted. I want to publish my trilogy, and continue to honor K in any ways that I can. She deserves to be remembered.

I know now that death and life go hand in hand. That’s why I have no patience for fake friendships and shallow relations. Everything I do, every person I interact with, is someone I am choosing to go through this life with. And that is not nothing. We never know what tomorrow will hold. I want to have no regrets.

Living through the rest of my life with tragedy is like living with a tattoo. It will be there permanently, but it won’t always be seen. I can’t just wake up every day with tears streaming down my face. I have to live, and not take it for granted. The world carries on, and so must we. But we can cherish the memories, and further appreciate the life we live and how we want to live it. I am even closer now with some of my friends who also knew K. We talked and grieved together after she died, and it helped me immensely.

For all those who have experienced major loss, I am so sorry. Nothing can fully heal that. It’s a mess that’s not meant to be tidied or cleaned up, but sometimes life asks us to. Just know, if there’s a part of you deep down that refuses to let it go, that’s okay. We are complex beings, we can’t show the world everything. And it’s not about the world at that point, it’s about your world.

What would help you best carry on? I’ve come to my own conclusions but they’re different for everyone. And that is why I don’t judge anymore when others grieve differently than me. I previously thought C was making the wrong decision, choosing to move on so quickly, but that is what he needed to do. All we can do is read the compass within our hearts, and not feel guilty wherever that points. <3