Losing a best friend

Last month, I lost my bestie.

This isn't a post about the loss of life. Nor is it one meant to take away from the heartache of such. This is a way for me to cope with a different kind of death: the kind where everyone continues their life after burying decades of friendship. I'm finally ready to accept the inevitable truth laid before me, and in doing such, validate the emotions of a grieving process that I and so many others are going through.

For the past 20 years, she has been my "person". She was there through the birth of my children, through my two failed marriages. The person who was my cheerleader when I began building my ceramics business, and the one I could turn to for the blunt truth about anything. I am (well, I was) the godmother to her child, and was the frequent babysitter of both her son and her dog. I was the first person she called when her dad was quickly losing his battle with cancer, and the one who did what I could to comfort her in the dark days that followed his death. We gossiped about nonsensical things and giggled over titktoks, we cried and consoled each other during hard times. We would FaceTime each other at least once a day. In the past month, there has been a small handful of strained, neutral "how's work going?" text messages.

All because of Covid.

The last year and a half has affected us all in ways that we could have never guessed. Mental health is at an all-time low, we are all realizing how unstable life can be. People lost their jobs, too many have lost their homes or the ability to financially care for themselves. We have had to learn what living through a pandemic is like, figure out how to juggle zoom meetings for a working adult and two school-aged children even though there's only one computer in the house. We have been told to quarantine, to mask or not to mask, listen to science or listen to politics. I could go on and on with the confusing whirlwind that has been 2019 through the present.

Everyone has their views, and I'm not here to tell you what side to be on. Just what side I'm on, and how that drove a nail into the coffin of a friendship that I treasured. I am science minded. I am active in politics and giving back to those around me. I am a single mother. I am a daughter to parents who are both high risk due to age and health issues. I am also immunocompromised, thanks to two autoimmune disorders. I spent the first six months of the pandemic scared and holed away in my home, sanitizing everything from groceries to my kids when we walked in the door if going out wasn't avoidable. I was elated when I was able to get vaccinated, and even though I have been fully vaccinated for months I still wear a mask everywhere and go through sanitizer faster than a speeding bullet.

My bestie doesn't feel the same. It doesn't matter why she won't wear a mask unless she is required to by a business, and it doesn't matter why she's refusing the vaccine. That's just how she is.

When the surge of the Delta variant started, I made it clear to the small group of people that I regularly see, that I would no longer be able to be in person with anyone not fully vaccinated. By no means was it meant to stop communication, it was just going to be shifted back to a virtual format. When I told my best friend this, she lashed out; from hurt or anger or both. It took a lot of encouragement from my parents and my boyfriend for me to realize I shouldn't feel guilty for protecting the health and safety of myself and my children. I couldn't believe that she would be anything but understanding, I was hurt that she took my boundaries personally, angry that she lashed out, sad that I had to make such a big decision, and hollow from all of the silence since the moment I told her. I'm also scared for her and her son, I don't know how I could take anything happening to either of them.

Honestly it pretty much mirrors the five stages of grief and loss.

I don't know how the future is going to be. I still reach for my phone when something happens in my life, because she was always the first person to know everything. As with everything that happens upon our life path, the world keeps going, and we must keep moving. The hard part is moving when you know it will mean stepping away from something, in this case someone, that has been there almost every step of the way.