A Letter To My Best Friend

“You’re my best friend” ~ Queen

Or, as defined by my dictionary

Best Friend (n): someone with whom one shares the strongest possible friendship, an especially close and trusted friend

 

I was asked what I’d do if I got together with someone who couldn’t handle that you were my best friend.

Well.

1/ You are. So anyone in my life has to accept that. And I’m not saying my taste is impeccable *cough* but not accepting you is non-negotiable. I’ve already altered relationships, friendships, because of how people have reacted to you being dead. You are still dead, btw, I’m not happy about that and I don’t imagine you’re thrilled either.

And

2/ Since when did love have boundaries? If you love you love. The heart expands, it doesn’t contract. Ok, so maybe it does contract a bit, like a puppy being kicked, when you’re rejected, when someone is cruel… But love…love is capable of being beyond that. It’s not saying I’m always here to be kicked by someone but I am capable of love even beyond kicking. I just won’t love the kicker any more, as it were. But I will not allow them to drive love out of me. The same way anyone in my life has to accept you are my best friend and you always will be. Because loving people? That’s friends, that’s family, that’s lovers, that’s life. You can’t parcel that out in so many miles. You can’t put a boundary on love “I’ll love you as far as Reading but that’s it” or, my personal favourite, “I don’t love south of the river this time of night.”

COME ON!

It’s love. I love you, loved you, you’re my best friend. Why would I let anyone in who doesn’t know to raise a glass to you, wouldn’t drink at least one respectful pint of John Smith’s in your name, and always understand that to deal with your inconsiderate deadness I often call you an idiot.

Not much change to you being alive at times, really.

I miss you, mate. I miss you so much.

 

Stef

 

Best Friend’s Note: Dave died on the 28th August 2014 following a massive brain haemorrhage. This is the post I wrote the following day and then the ones in the subsequent years

https://princessofvp.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/best-friend/

I Never Could Get the Hang of Thursdays: A Letter To My Best Friend

https://princessofvp.wordpress.com/2016/08/28/1233/

Jump Into The Abyss

“You’re my best friend” ~ Queen

Or, as defined by my dictionary

Best Friend (n): someone with whom one shares the strongest possible friendship, an especially close and trusted friend

 

I think, in the words of Terry Pratchett, Dave didn’t so much die young as leave early to avoid the rush. Because we all know this year has been absolutely awful for death and Dave never was one for hanging around at parties.

I forget sometimes, I genuinely forget that he’s dead, and that whole remembering process crashes over me. Swifter now than before, not always as jaggedly painful, sometimes downright awful. And it’s the lack of contact that is weighing hard on me now.

I didn’t reply to his last text, you see. I wasn’t ignoring him, it just wasn’t something I had any response to. It sits there now on my phone, forever unanswered. I still don’t have anything to say in response to it but the fact I never can is something I will be a long time getting my head around.

Pretty much everyone who ever loses someone, and even more those who lose someone unexpectedly, talks about there not being enough time, to tell people they matter, etc etc. I do it too. But as was pointed out these are wise words that we think we adhere to but actually seldom do. And it’s true. I try to tell or show the people I love that I love them, to make time for those who matter, to take risks and leaps with my one wild and precious life. but I don’t always manage it. There is a heap of stuff unsaid, not done, because I am lazy or unmotivated or actually too damn scared.

The scared rankles. I can embrace my laziness, my indolence, I can’t be doing with scared. But sometimes the pain of risk, of retribution and dire consequence, feels so much stronger that those important things remain unsaid or undone. The timing doesn’t feel right or so we tell ourselves. But the whole thing is about timing, isn’t it? And that, my friends, is finite. The time right now is all we’ve got.

I can’t ever text Dave again. But I can do the other things. Maybe, like Nick Cave says, I’ll jump into the abyss and find it only comes up to my knees. 

Take care, mate. I miss you.

 

Stef

 

 

*Best Friend’s Note: Dave died on 28th August 2014 following a massive brain haemorrhage. These are posts I’ve written previously

https://princessofvp.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/best-friend/

https://princessofvp.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/i-never-could-get-the-hang-of-thursdays-a-letter-to-my-best-friend/

 

I Never Could Get the Hang of Thursdays: A Letter To My Best Friend

“You’re my best friend” ~ Queen

Or, as defined by my dictionary

Best Friend (n): someone with whom one shares the strongest possible friendship, an especially close and trusted friend

 

Where are you?

Apparently you’re still dead. That’s as preposterous and ridiculous as it was when Jamie rang me a year ago to tell me. Why are you dead? Dude, that was never on the agenda. Weren’t you at the meeting?

I don’t imagine you’d ever wondered where I would be when receiving news of your death. I mean, we covered funerals and all that but I think we both thought I was always going first. However, as you beat me to it, I think you’d approve of the circumstances; I was drunk in a pub with @bear_faced_lady. I gave the couple at the next table quite the cause for concern as I stood up, wandered about in a 360, then sat back down on a stool. The ensuing surging flow of tears was probably also a heads up that things weren’t exactly right. Mate, really, dying? Come on…

Oh, and on that subject, dying in your dressing gown on a Thursday morning? Too Arthur Dent for words. “I never could get the hang of Thursdays” indeed. That should be your epitaph. For me it always will be.

They raised the UK threat level the day after you died, did you know that? You’ll be pleased to see that Jamie and I dealt with this in our usual respectful manner:

 

 

I miss you, mate. I fucking miss you. How can you be dead?

Honestly, it’s also massively inconvenient. It’s messed up Strictly, for starters. And don’t get me started on Game of Thrones. @MagicDarts has stepped in to the breach but he’s hardly the same. And as for Terry Pratchett…  He died, Dave, he died, and that is all manner awful. Ok, apparently you died too and that’s why I’m writing this but still… Neither of you are (fuck off with ‘were’ and notions of past tense) afterlife kind of people. But if there’s any concept of justice anywhere then I really hope you both got Death AND the Death of Rats. SQUEAK.

(from: http://atan.deviantart.com/art/The-Death-of-Rats-16125387)

I know, I really know, how much you would hate the pain your absence causes. How apologetic you would be for it. I can hear your voice, teenager style, saying “I didn’t ask to be dead.”

I just can’t believe I’m never going to see you again.

I miss you. You’ll always be my best friend.

 

Stef

 

*Best Friend’s Note: Dave died last year following a massive brain haemorrhage. This is the post I wrote the following day

https://princessofvp.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/best-friend/

 

 

Best Friend

“You’re my best friend” ~ Queen

Or, as defined by my dictionary

Best Friend (n): someone with whom one shares the strongest possible friendship, an especially close and trusted friend

 

Dave & I met when we were 13 or 14. We could never quite be sure but it was that academic year.

We sat next to each other in French and exchanged conversations by writing in the back of his dictionary. I mainly wrote about boys. Given that he was hopelessly in love with me I don’t know how he put up with this but put up with me he did.

We were part of the geeks and misfits. Those souls who find each other, even though they’d rather not, cos that means admitting you are a geek and a misfit. But that’s what we were.

Obviously, as we all know now, the geek shall inherit the earth.

It was Dave that I binge watched TV with before binge watching TV was even a thing. The West Wing, 24, Desperate Housewives; all with Dave. When I moved away from our home town I struggled to watch any of the without him.

We later discovered we both loved Strictly Come Dancing when it returned to TV and would watch together via the medium of texting each other during the show. This became trickier when one of us wasn’t watching at the time so we fell in the habit of checking just before transmission. Every. Single. Time.

It’s Dave’s shoulder I have cried on like no other. Dave I text just to say “go outside and look at the moon”. Dave I turn to when my family are driving me to distraction and I need an escape.

He’s the only person I’ve ever known to drive without their shoes on. A habit that always slightly perturbed me. It’s legal. He checked.

Gentle but no pushover. Surprisingly tense for someone so laid back. Kinda meh about a lot of humanity but when he cared he cared.

And I can’t imagine the world without him. He would be mortified about the grief his loss is causing because he wouldn’t want those he loved to suffer. But there is no avoiding it. You can’t love someone this much and not die inside when they go.

Dave, you’re my best friend.

http://youtu.be/pknlFm-gxLc