When Your Friends Abandon You In Your Grief

I recently wrote about how a friend of mine ‘ghosted’ me after my mother died. She was one of my closest friends for a long time. We supported each other through our creative endeavours, we bonded over our favorite films, we had cocktails, coffee and afternoon tea at least once a month, if not once a week, and we even did a project together that we were both extremely proud of. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, Claire was there for me. When my mother died, she wasn’t.

For months, she kept brushing me off, and telling me she couldn’t meet up. She was very busy, and she simply did not have the time to meet me. I texted her, she didn’t reply. I texted her again, saying I understood she was busy and to please get in touch whenever she could. She didn’t. We finally met at an event for the project we did together, and things were awkward. We spoke about my mother briefly, I told her I was glad I had my friends, hoping it would prompt some sort of apology from her, but it didn’t. She never brought up the fact that she had been absent from my life or try to explain why that was, and I didn’t feel like asking her about it either. I felt it was her job to bring it up. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I should have asked her about it. But then I realised something.

I really didn’t need to ask her why. I just needed to accept it. Whatever ‘it’ was. Because if I have learned anything from my mother’s death is that some people will not care. Some people don’t care what someone is going through. Some of them don’t even know what to say or how to bring it up. They feel uncomfortable, which is understandable. Not as uncomfortable as I feel about going through the rest of my life without my mother, though.

I thought my mother’s death, followed by my grandmother’s death, would be a major thing when it came to a lot of my friendships. A turning point of sorts that would bring us even closer than we were before. But in the end, it sort of wasn’t. And it still isn’t. Most of my friends have been extremely supportive and I’m very, very grateful and happy about that, and they know who they are. But others – some of whom I was certain would be there for me – have not. This life-changing thing really only changed my life, not anyone else’s. People go about their day like nothing happened, as they should. Because it didn’t happen to them. They texted me when it happened, I saw some of them maybe once or twice since and that was it. No big fuss. When you see things like this in films or sitcoms, you think it will be the same for you. Friends coming round to check in on you with a bottle of champagne, neighbours making you some homemade soup for when you simply can’t get out of bed, people texting you all the time to see how you’re doing, or posting some grandiose thing on social media about how wonderful you are and how much they love you. But that just isn’t true in real life. At least not in my case. And it is, of course, unrealistic to expect it to happen at all.

Friends come and go, as we all know. Life goes on. Even when it feels like life doesn’t go on for you, it will go on for them.