When journalist Lauren Potts found out her childhood best friend had passed away on Facebook, she was shocked by the weight of her grief.
Liz and I met on the first day of nursery school in 1988 when I marched over, grabbed her hand and told her to stop crying. We had the perfect dynamic – she was sensitive and kind, and I was bold enough for the both of us. But the thing that ultimately bound us was loyalty.
It was before the internet so it would have been easy to lose touch, yet the letters decorated with Forever Friends stickers went back and forth. In our teenage years we moved on to email, then visits to her university, where she tried to set me up with a friend. We giggled, danced and, for reasons now lost to me, developed an obsession with Wild Cherry’s. In spite of the separation we continued to hit silly, normal friendship milestones for years.But as we grew older, we grew apart.
“It can take us by surprise when we have these intense emotions or sadness but even though you weren’t close now, it was a bond formed a long time ago and that stays with you. “Just because you no longer have a relationship does not mean you don’t grieve for them when they die [and] the death of someone important to you is a huge thing to cope with, even if you were not as close as you once were. There’s also an element that you are grieving what should have been and the relationship you wish you had, and grief can put a huge spotlight on the things you feel you missed.
“It’s not just losing her as a person, it’s about losing her as a memory-sharer and a witness to that period of your life and the experiences you both had,” says Jenkins. Unsure whether he’d recognise me, I decided not to approach Liz’s dad afterwards and instead write him a letter about the impact she had on my life. When his quick reply comes with its descriptions of our mischief and magic, I realise not all the shared memories have been lost.
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