On the Death of a Best Friend (RIP Ben) 1/14/23

One year ago today, at 23 years old, I lost my best friend Ben. The words I have written below are my best attempt at a description of the journey his death has brought to my life. Unfortunately, these words can in no way fully represent the depth of pain, despair, loneliness, and hopelessness I have felt since that moment. Nothing can describe how far my heart dropped when I got the call. The shelf on which it had forever rested had been suddenly ripped from underneath, leaving it in a new, eternal freefall of painful darkness. Conceptually, I understood he was dead. But physically and emotionally, I had no idea what it meant. My brain knew death but not my heart.

The first few days were exhausting. Constant stream of tears, heart-thumping panic, and the freefall described above. There were times where I thought I was drowning completely. Having to remind myself even to breathe. After doing so, wondering how long I can carry on this way. Thinking it would be better if I, myself, had died too. I gave up any idea of recovery. I saw no way of healing. Nothing that informed me of the right steps to take. Depression, pain, and heartbreak suffocated me. Joy, laughter, connection, and all things worthy were ripped from my life in a permanent way. I gave up on ever feeling them again. I was no longer living on earth but rather stuck in an in-between realm of memories, regrets, and what-ifs. I could attempt to describe this phase in a million different ways, and none would accurately portray the experience. It was the most vulnerable I have ever been. The rawest pain I have ever felt. My heart learning about death, and through the process, it, too, was dying.

After the initial shock, after death’s hands sheafed the knife it was using to cut me open and the blood of the wound had dried, a dull, yet incredibly potent and constant pain followed. All sorts of things were happening in a communion of grief and sadness. The city I was so comfortable in, the place I called home, changed completely. It was gray. Empty. Bustling with life, yet to me, all was dead. I spent countless hours curled up on a hardwood floor in the middle of the winter. I watched the day turn to night without moving. Alone, crying until I couldn’t. My body left with no avenue for physical relief until a potent memory flashed or a certain song played and a river of tears protruded. A continuous cyclical process that continued for weeks. I didn’t work for a month. I went on a vacation that was previously planned with good friends and close connections. They were happy. I was not. Even around them (especially around them), I felt alone. I would escape from the group, call my mom, and cry on the phone with her for hours. “I wish there was something I could do”, she would say over and over. There wasn’t. My friends enjoyed themselves (rightfully so, they were on vacation and they didn’t know Ben like I did… some not at all). They went to dinner. I stayed in the car. They were dancing. I withdrew and cried. I could feel no connection to the world. Nothing that tethered me back to the reality I knew before his death. Often, I tried to fake it. Convincing myself that Ben would want me to be here, enjoying my time away (which is true). But even when I smiled, even when I laughed and played, I felt an emptiness so vast and terrifying it took away any real remembrance of joy for the experience. My heart constantly pounding and my brain shouting “where is Ben?”... still not sure what his death meant. I flew back to be at his funeral. When his mom first saw me, she fell into my arms crying immediately. I sobbed. I helped where I could. They asked me to do a reading at the service. When it came time for the reading, I choked back tears and paused as I read the line “Love does not die”, in my head considering that phrase and what it meant before carrying on with the rest. Voice shaking and body trembling, I went back to my seat heartbroken. Still not understanding how this could be real. Floating from place to place, situation to situation, stuck in my dark realm of longing memories. After the funeral, I went back to his childhood home. I sat in his room. I drank with his friends. We were all quiet. Confused. Expecting Ben to come out of some corner or text one of us saying he just got lost and his phone was dead. Our hearts still hoping he was alive. Our brains constantly reminding us he isn’t. The resulting hopelessness of this unfortunate dichotomy was unlike any I have felt before. To have your greatest and only hope be the one thing that is 100% not possible in this life, not even physically imaginable, is a dark place to be.

At some point in these grueling weeks of battle my pain-stricken heart and soul were going through (I do not know when for time ceased to matter), I had a strange yet incredibly important realization. I suddenly understood that this pain and suffering, this grief, this love with nowhere to go, would be my last tangible connection with Ben (I know now this isn’t true). Immediately, my heart took its armor off. I was no longer fighting my grief. No longer looking for a way out. I was not giving up, but I was surrendering. I dove head first down the deep cavern in my soul that his death created. Not working against the anchor bringing me down, but instead, swimming and thrashing to catch up with it. I didn’t care if I ever came out. I didn’t care if I would feel hopeless, lonely, and heartbroken forever. I only knew that this terrifyingly vast, overwhelmingly dark emotional cavern was created by Ben, and for that reason, I went ever-deeper. My feelings of grief and despair, of loneliness, of pain and hopelessness, got stronger. Louder. The deeper I went the harder it was. But I was not battling. I was not trying to be happy.

Eventually, I reached the bottom. Darkness, despair, and pain surrounded me. I could hardly eat. I could find no joy or reason to continue. Now, fully untethered from reality and floating in an ineffable gray space with a hopelessness I can only compare to an astronaut lost in space, I had not a single thought of recovery or salvation.

I spent a very long time in this state, at the bottom of my grief. I became familiar with emotions I had been taught, as a man, to ignore. I experienced endless tears and constant heartbreak. I unshackled myself from the anchor that originally brought me down. Free to leave whenever I pleased.

But I didn’t.

I stayed there for quite some time. I became friendly with my pain. I was even grateful for it. It became the highest priority in my life. My work, my hobbies, and even my other relationships were put on the backburner. I spent days on the couch. I sought out tears. I laid in Ben’s bed, wearing his clothes and listening to his music.

This, perhaps, was my most beneficial act. Surrendering. Making conscious decisions and taking active steps to feel the pain and the grief I had for Ben. Not caring about being happy or myself. Not worrying or listening to what others thought I should be doing. But, instead, properly honoring the pain within me.

The result of this prioritization of pain was that I began to see my path forward through grief. I began to see some form of light. A faint path that seemingly came from nowhere but was undeniably present. This path wasn’t what I expected. It didn’t guide me to seeing the good in life again. It didn’t ask me to move on or lead me out of the cavern that had become my home, the place that was the most painful yet simultaneously where I found the most comfort… hiding away from a world that had carried on without effect or pain from Ben… forever darker because of it. In fact, the path I saw kept me in that cavern. It asked me to sit in my grief. Eternally stuck in the hardest part of love.

It’s hard to say when I came out of that darkness. I certainly never decided to. Back then, if it were up to me, I never would have left. I would have always chosen to be down there. I would have chosen that pain forever. I felt close to him there.

Now though, I’m glad I left. It was gradual, and throughout the process, I discovered many valuable lessons on life.

What was first noticeable was an extreme and intense anxiety that anyone I loved would be ripped from me at any moment. Getting off the phone with someone, instantly, I would worry that this was the last time I would speak with them. On the way home after hanging out with loved ones, I would cry thinking they would die before we would see eachother again. I believed I would be left alone in the world forever stuck in a grief-fueled haze. Doomed to never enjoy the warm comfort that comes with the presence of the special people in my life, the ones I love.

Eventually though, this anxiety, this deep, trauma-fueled fear, lended itself to some emotional progress for me. For this is a fundamental truth of life: Everytime you see someone might be the last. It cannot be argued or disputed, and although all who hear this would agree, only those who have felt unexpected loss are painfully aware. Only those who have gone to bed with love and woken up with less fully know the terrifying effects of this existential truth.

Many of us (including me before) go through life taking our relationships for granted. Always thinking there will be at least one more time. At least one more smile, joke, or hug. When it is time to say goodbye, we think that we will know. We think, without giving it much thought, that we can say goodbye on our own terms. Like an entitled child who thinks all that is good is theirs, we unwittingly believe closure and conclusions will always exist.

Because I now know this is a false sense of security, a trick of the conditioned mind that thinks what is and what has been will always be, I value my time spent with loved ones in a much deeper way. I laugh harder. I smile wider. I hug, kiss, and always tell folks I love them. Especially the men in my life because they don’t hear it enough.

Still, after this anxiety of loss shifted for me (it never left… I still feel it), I had other feelings to deal with. Mainly, a hole in my heart that was not there before. A dimness in my life where brightness once was. A part of me missing like a child without excitement in their eyes. Even if I was starting to see light again, my friend was gone. Nothing could change that. This fact was so pervasive, ever present. A snake in the grass that was sneaking its way into every interaction, experience, or thought I had. Constantly staring in my face with a dedication so terrifying and firmness so captivating. I could not look away.

I felt pressure to deal with this. To learn how to let it go and have it affect me no longer.

An unfortunate and difficult part of grief is that, after a month or two, people stop caring in the way they did before. The world moves on, and it expects you to move on with it. I kept waiting and waiting for this hole in my heart to go away so that I could be myself again. This snake to leave so that I could be happy again. Return to the self I knew. The person my loved ones loved and who they expected me to be.

Three months passed.

Six months passed.

Nine months.

Again, I cannot say when this happened, but eventually, I realized my grief was never going to leave. I would never return to the Jack that I once knew. This hole within me, this crater that Ben left, would never be filled. Today, as I am writing this, everytime I see a picture or hear his name, I feel its existence within me. I long for his presence with the same intensity that I did a year ago.

But even so, one thing about it has changed: the way I relate to it. I no longer see it as a hopeless pit of despair and desire that will curse me until I myself am ready to die even if it is by my own hands. It isn’t the black spot on my life that marked where I became forever doomed, where beauty turned to disgust, light to dark.

It is different now. I see it differently. It is still incredibly sad, but it is also inexplicably beautiful and wildly raw.

I see it as a reminder of Ben.

I see it as an intense human experience that all will go through, a reminder of my place in this world.

I see it as a mark of a true friendship, true love.

I see it as the pain in which my love sits when it has nowhere to go.

I see it as a reminder to hug my relationships tightly, to make sure they know how much I love them.

I see it as motivation to follow my heart because life is short.

I see it as a fear that will always be with me.

I see it as a gentle nudge to take that extra step, to walk through any fear I have, to be fully alive.

I see it for what it truly is, love.

This scar, which will forever be on my soul, is so emotionally complex yet so human. It exists solely in pain but, somewhere within that pain, it lends itself to awe and beauty. The level of pure emotion it reaches, even today, is ineffable and unlike anything I’ve experienced. It has pushed me to be a completely different Jack. I am the Jack that Ben knew I could be and that I always wanted to be. I am the Jack that he loved.

I still cry about Ben. I still feel heartbroken. But I am no longer lost. I no longer resist these feelings. Anytime I cry, it isn’t a sad thing. It is a wonderful thing. It is my unexpressed love for Ben. It is a reminder that I took the most consequential action one can in life: to love someone so deeply. It reminds me of how true and deep our friendship was, and now, because of this emotional scar, it would be impossible to forget that.

Ben’s death has completely changed my life, and although I am a more intentional person after it, my life is infinitely worse without him here. It is understandably odd and uncomfortable to say that his death made me stronger, but it is true nonetheless. We go through life and we learn. We evolve. Still, nothing can replace the connection we shared. No amount of strength, love, or emotional progress. Like a wanting child, ten times out of ten I would choose for him to be here.

Even so, I gave up on searching for a connection like the one we shared. I don’t think I’ll ever find one, and I don’t want to. It was unique, deep, and beautiful. And everytime I cry, everytime one of our songs comes on, everytime I look on my phone and see “No Location Found” under his name, every time I climb, ski, or enjoy the outdoors, I am heartbroken yet intensely reminded of the love we shared. This love I still hold for him has evolved into such a tragic yet incredibly profound and beautiful form. Rather than trying to recreate with someone else, I sit in gratitude for the best friend I’ve ever had.

Finally, to Ben,

My love for you still grows today. I love you in the most interestingly vivid, catastrophically beautiful way. Thank you for continuing to help me grow, even in your death. Your memory, heart, and soul will live forever within me, and I will never stop sharing the beauty of our love with others.

In my dreams, we climb and laugh.

I hope you’re climbing and laughing somewhere buddy.

With deep love and gratitude for everything you were, everything you are, and everything you gave me in both life and death,

Jack