When Friends Die

Book: Friend Grief and Men: Defying Stereotypes, Victoria Noe

The death of a friend can hit as hard as any death.

But the grief we hear about most of the time involves a parent, spouse or a child. We also read about the trauma when a beloved pet dies, and this is not to be taken lightly. Often overlooked is the grief that people feel when a friend dies.

            Friends can be closer than family because we have chosen them for something vital that they bring into our lives. They become our go-to people when life becomes unbearably hard or we need to celebrate something tonight. We expect them to be part of our lives for a long time.

            If a friend is the first death of someone close, it’s probably a death that was unexpected and out-of-sequence, and we have no framework for understanding it. Normally our grandparents are the first to die. This usually happens when we are young, they are old, and we may not yet comprehend that death is forever. Although it’s a shock, we come to understand their deaths as part of the cycle of life. Our expectation is that as our parents will be the next to go. 

            When friends die, especially when they are young, we struggle to understand how this could happen. It doesn’t seem right or fair. Car accidents, cancer, unknown health issues take away too many friends before we are ready to lose them, not that we are ever ready. Besides missing them terribly, their deaths are stark reminders of our own mortality because they were our age.

            *

            In her series of short books called Friend Grief, Victoria Noe addresses this area of loss. In this book she focuses on men and how they deal with the death of their friends. She explores the stories of several men who lost friends to chronic illnesses, skiing accidents, as well as the death of mentors. 

            Of particular interest to me was Noe’s discussion of men who have been in battles (military and the AIDS epidemic) when friends were dying all around them, and in the chaos, as everyone was scrambling to stay alive and there wasn’t time to mourn, their grieving was delayed. Now, after the wars are over, men are feeling isolated in their grief and being lost to suicide. Some feel guilty for surviving, and many have no one to talk to who understands this. Thankfully, Noe notes, groups are forming with others who have survived these wars, and men are finding support with each other.

            She notes that men are often confused about how to express their grief, feeling that crying undermines their masculinity, so they feel pressured to keep their emotions buttoned up, and grief resurfaces years later. 

            Our society has lost the language for talking intelligently about grief. Thankfully, we have begun reclaiming some of this in the last decade, and Noe’s work is furthering the discussion. 

You can find more information about Victoria’s books at www.victorianoe.com.