Surviving The Loss of Your Best Friend

Surviving the loss of a friend can be a difficult process. The grief and loss that you feel can be extremely hard to deal with, especially in the very beginning. My closest friend, Tory, passed away on December 23, 2005. We had been best friends for 38 years, since he was 10 and I was 12. When he died I felt like a part of me died as well, and my life will never be the same. I am learning to live with this loss, but the grieving process continues for me and for his family and friends.

I am certainly not an expert in this area, but I can share with you some things that I have done to work through this over the past year.

• We talk about Tory as much as we can. He had so many friends and now we talk about all of the good times that we had with him over the years. We share stories and events in Torys life that made us love him so much.
• I set up a blog to post pictures and information about Tory. His friends and family can visit the site and make comments about how we are feeling. Every month or so I hear from someone new that didnt know that he had passed away and we spend time talking about Tory and his life.
• We call his mother regularly. She brought him into the world and I believe she is suffering the most from this loss. She is always so happy to hear from me and we talk about good times I spent with Tory. She likes to hear about what I am doing now and I keep her up to date with my life and activities.
• I collected about 300 pictures of Tory and I scanned each one to make them digital. Then I made CDs with music in the background. During the first few months I made a new CD with different pictures and music almost every week. Then I would send them out to his mother and anyone else who wanted one. It always made me cry to watch them but I think it also made me feel better. The pictures were of Tory doing the things he loved and the music was something that he liked.

These are some of the things that have made this loss easier to bear. Tory died from choking on food. He was all alone and no one could help him. It was right at Christmas so it was even harder on us to think about. It was a horrible accident that should not have happened. God must have been ready for Tory even though the rest of us were not ready to give him up.

I will never have a friend like Tory again. By keeping his memory alive I feel that we still have a part of him here with us. My heart has not healed and I think about him every day. But I am learning to accept my loss and know that God had other plans for Tory and that I must accept that fact.

Connie Ragen Green is a motivational writer, speaker, and mentor. To find out more visit her at http://greenhouse.typepad.com/law_of_attraction

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Grief Loss . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.