When it comes to grieving an old friend, there is no rule book

This story is part of the May 3 edition of Good Weekend.See all 14 stories.

You can always tell when a person has never lost anyone close. It’s in the way they respond to your news as if it’s just that: a fact. And it’s not the words they use, it’s the complete absence of genuine empathy in their tone, not through ill will or indifference, but because they simply don’t have the experience to imagine how such a loss feels.

It’s somehow worse when a long-term friend goes. Well, she wasn’t your wife, your lover or a family member, so, you know? Well no, I don’t know. Are you saying I should just get over it because we weren’t married?

There are prescribed pathways for grief in our society. It’s what makes the funeral industry thrive. You go to the funeral, you dress in black, you send a particular kind of flower and perhaps a “sorry for your loss” card to the family home, then you sit in a chapel and listen to the eulogies with a lump in your throat from the suppressed desire to weep as lovely photos are screened over favourite music.

The husband mourns the wife, the mother mourns the son, the devastated daughter grieves the loving father. Afterwards, you put on a brave face and mingle among the instant-coffee-and-party-pie-consuming flock whose main emotion is relief that the ritual is over. We’ve done our bit, they seem to say, chatting now about the weather and the footy.

But what if your friend of 50 years goes suddenly, distantly, say, in the middle of a pandemic? There are no guide ropes. Who will understand what her counsel meant to you, how her wit and laughter are woven through your life like golden threads, practically from childhood? That’s how it was for me and Elle. Seven years my senior, she taught me to play guitar when I was 14, and we remained pals until the day she died. We were travel companions and confidantes, witnesses to the best and worst in each other’s lives, friends in the truest sense.

She called me out of the blue on her last day. I didn’t even know she was in hospital. Weakened by decades of smoking and inactivity, her system could no longer fend off a simple urinary tract infection. The doctors gave her two days. She had one. “Mate,” she quipped, “I’m knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.” Winded, breathless, I blurted out that I loved her. “And I you,” she said. And that was that.

You feel it but it doesn’t consume you. It putters sentimentally through a lifetime of memories and things you were both passionate about.

I fled to the airport and bought a ticket for the first plane I could get on. Of course it was delayed, and as I was boarding my phone rang. It was her nephew. “She’s gone,” he said. Apparently, her call to me had lifted her spirits, so the family went to grab a bite. When they returned, she had passed. I got off the plane. Where would I stay in a pandemic? Without her, surrounded by all her things, her flat would be unendurable.

A few days later, I watched a desultory funeral online: it lasted no more than 10 minutes. The music was all wrong, the funeral home misspelt her name and the eulogy from a family member, though amusing, rang hollow. I kicked myself and wished that I had toughed it out, convinced myself I could have made a difference and connected in grief to the family who virtually scorned her, and had refused any and all friendship overtures from me for 50 years. But the last great trick grief plays is on yourself. You want to weep but can’t. You feel it but it doesn’t consume you. It putters sentimentally through a lifetime of memories and things you were both passionate about.

Nearly three years after Elle’s death, I was doomscrolling videos on Facebook when a contestant on one of those big talent shows – a boy soprano with doe eyes and the voice of an angel – sang Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu, from his Requiem mass, composed in response to his father’s death. Pie Jesu meant a great deal to Elle: its palpable innocence, like a resilient flower standing firm against an oncoming tide of slush.

I was suddenly convulsed with wracking, ugly sobs and had to hold on to the bed for fear of falling right through the floor. But as is the way on social media now, the video was yanked off mid-high note to be replaced by a sketchy ad for corn chips, complete with a hideous salsa soundtrack.

However, the spell was broken, grief had crested and I somehow felt at peace. I suppose I’ve got corn chips to thank for not being swallowed by a pit of despair that at the time felt endless and from which I might never have returned.

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.