Losing James was devastating, but it gave me a road map for a better life

I was 18 when I met James. Working at a supermarket around my studies, I was young, fresh-faced and filled with big dreams. I wanted to move to Australia, write books and carve my place in the world. Coming from a northern English, working-class background, those ambitions often felt out of reach, but when I talked to James, they felt possible.

James was the kind of once-in-a-lifetime friend most people wish they could be lucky enough to meet. He was impossibly funny, unwaveringly kind and in possession of the biggest, warmest heart.

Our relationship was happy and free in the way most are at that age, centred around nights out and pub trips and belly laughs. But our friendship also went beyond the lighthearted stuff. Once, when I was sick and my parents were away, James dropped snacks and medicine off at my door. Another time, I went out in a different city and my purse was stolen. Panicked and with no way to get home, I called the most reliable person I knew. James picked me up, no questions asked. That’s just the type of friend he was.

Jess Kitching had to confront grief head-on in her 20s after the death of her friend James.

I will always remember the moment James told me he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer.

He’d been silent for a few days – uncharacteristic, given the fact that we texted every day. When he asked if he could come to my parents’ house to talk, I said yes.

There, while sitting on the end of my bed, James told me the news.

To say I was shocked was an understatement. While I knew that young people could get sick, I never expected it to happen to someone I knew, and definitely not someone who was so incredibly good. I was confused and angry, but I told James that it would be OK. I knew he wanted to travel to America, New York especially. He wanted to get married and have children. He had a life to live, one that deserved to be wonderful.

What followed was a long battle with many ups and downs. Anyone who has been around cancer knows what a cruel and unrelenting illness it is. James beat his cancer only for it to return and spread. Then, while we were out one night, James stopped me and said that he couldn’t feel the left side of his body. The brain tumour was found the next day.

Even in the last moments of James’ life, I refused to believe he would die. He couldn’t. He was too good, too full of life, too loved. But in my early 20s, I learned the hard way that some people don’t get the end to their story that they deserve.

To say that losing James changed everything is an understatement. It was the first time I realised that life is unpredictable and finite. From then on, everything felt uncertain and wrong. I looked at my life and realised that while I talked about what I wanted, I wasn’t creating that future for myself. For years, I had saved to fund a year of writing and travelling around Australia, but I hadn’t done anything about making it happen.

Jess Kitching’s book, The Life Experiment, was inspired by her experience of living through grief.

So I booked a flight and began moving – running through life, really. I chased dreams and flights and interactions as if cramming my time with significant experiences could stem the hurt of losing someone who had meant so much to me.

Then COVID happened, and I was forced to stop and face myself. Namely, the things I was running from. I asked the big, scary questions: Was I happy? Was I taking my life in the direction I wanted it to go? If I kept pushing forward so relentlessly while being so clueless about who I wanted to be, where would I end up?

From these questions, my novel, The Life Experiment, came to life.

Writing it around my crime fiction deadlines, I called it my secret project, but really, the book was a space where I could reflect on the loss that shaped me. Death is something we only face when forced to, speaking in hushed tones as if mentioning death invites it into our life. But life and death go hand in hand.

At its core, The Life Experiment is about hope and happiness. It asks readers to reflect on their lives and imagine their future. To take their dreams and themselves seriously. To understand that life and death run parallel to each other, and acknowledge that while grief cannot be outrun, where there is great grief, there is great love.

It’s a story about the beauty in small moments. The hug that feels like it could right all that’s wrong in the world. The loved one who remembers the dreams you discarded. And, in the case of my characters, Layla and Angus, the stranger you meet at a coffee shop on the worst of days, whose smile turns your life on its head.

Grief made me learn that life is unavoidable, beautiful, messy and complex. There are so many things I wish I’d said to James. So many times I wish I’d gone to the hospital, even though he’d told me not to come. And there have been so many moments since that I wish I could have shared with him.

While I can’t change the past, I can continue to live by James’ example: choosing kindness always and finding a laugh or a smile, even in the face of hardship.

The Life Experiment (Simon & Schuster) by Jess Kitching is out July 29.

Get the best of Sunday Life magazine delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. Sign up here for our free newsletter.