Bereft31

@kayc Thank you for your long and thoughtful response. Amidst the monster of grief for my father, I’ve found myself also grieving this friendship. It has multiplied my pain and heartbreak. I would have understood (though not tolerated) the behaviour had this person not have experienced similar loss in his life, but he has. Which is what makes the behaviour entirely inexplicable. Perhaps I was misjudging the friendship all along. I’m so sorry about your dog. I hope you can heal and find peace. The love of our loved ones never leaves us, even if they aren’t around in physical form.

This is a question about grief and a close friend’s behaviour that’s really troubling me. I am a woman in my late thirties, I lost my father to a prolonged illness a month back. My mother passed more than decade back. I have had a really close male friend who’s been one of my closest friends for many years. We are both in our late thirties and have been friends for twenty years. He himself has lost both his parents in recent years, and through my father’s illness has provided a listening ear and emotional support to me. He wasn’t at my dad’s funeral as he lives in another city, but 4 days later, came down to be with me over the weekend. I was still in a bit of a daze, and was largely busy sorting through my father’s belongings etc. but spent evenings with my friend, prioritising him over other relatives etc., who also wanted to meet with me. I was grateful that he came down to be with me, but wasn’t quite myself so soon after it had happened. We talked about both our parents, loss etc. and also about other general, somewhat silly stuff. Towards the end of his visit, we had (to my mind), some very frivolous, silly banter about his dating life (he’s single and looking). He hugged me and left, but called me on the phone a while later. To my utter shock, he shouted at me, as something I had said had touched a raw nerve somewhere. I was so shocked by the sudden change in his tone and the fact that he would yell at me while I was mourning my Dad, that I broke down on the phone, told him I couldn’t talk about this at the moment and kept the phone down, but not before hearing him say “yeah whatever”. It totally broke me. Later that night, I sent him a couple of messages expressing how I felt shocked at his behaviour and that I couldn’t believe he would yell at me at such a time, about something so trivial and obviously frivolous. He never responded to it. It’s now been over a month and I have heard absolutely nothing from this friend. I’m not only deeply grieving my father, but also confused, angry and deeply hurt about his behaviour, as I simply cannot understand why someone whom I considered one of my closest friends for over two decades would abandon me at a time like this. I simply don’t understand his behaviour. Am I missing something here? Should I just consider the friendship over? Have I done something obviously wrong? Surely, I don’t deserve to be treated like this?