Grieving Beloved Friend

[Dfrankjazz]

Hi friends, I recently lost my all-time beloved best friend of 20 years on Feb. 20th. He and I spoke every night for 7 months during his horrific battle with pancreatic cancer, I was his main spiritual/emotional support person. After he died, I cried every day for 3 weeks... the memorial service for him wasn't until 2 weeks ago. Since the service I once again find myself feeling this constant deep pain and emptiness, like an energetic depression.

I didn't expect there to be so much ongoing distress and emptiness after this event, is this normal?

Thanks for your ears, God bless!

[kayc]

Hi, welcome to this site. I am so sorry you lost your friend of 20 years, that's really hard. This is a great site with some very compassionate people who have been there and we'll all help see you through this. You might want to ask Marty to move this to "Loss of Spouse/Partner", it gets more traffic. There have been others who have posted there with loss of their closest friend.

Yes, I'm afraid it is normal. You will experience the whole gamut of emotions and all of the secondary losses that go with it. It does take a long time to fully process death of someone close to you. I wasn't prepared for just how hard it would hit me when my husband died, but then I thought it'd be a long time away.

Cancer is a very hard thing to watch someone go through, and caretakers experience unique losses as well...such as loss of purpose. What they did day in and day out for a long time is suddenly gone and they find themselves not really knowing what to do or where they belong anymore.

Be really kind and patient with yourself, you're experiencing the hardest knock there is in life. You will want to take extra good care of yourself, it felt good to me to go walking and eat healthy every day after I lost my husband, a way I can take some form of power back after having lost so much. Plus it helps you feel at your best when your brain is already very foggy. It's hard to do this when you wake up not caring about anything, so sometimes we just have to press through...try not to think too far into the future, today has enough to deal with. And it helps to take mental note of anything good that happens in the day, no matter how small it is, it helps you focus in a positive direction...some days it takes real concerted effort.

Feel free to come here and post any time, there's almost always someone on line here as there are people from all over the world so it crosses several time zones.

(((hugs)))

Kay