Grief rituals, 6 months on

Healing / existing

Every time I sit down to write something about my feelings around the unexpected death of one of my closest friends 6 months ago today, I find it too hard to pick words that adequately convey the depth of loss and love there, so I usually just give up and go back to listening to a sad indie girl playlist and sobbing deeply, from the gut, for like 6 or 7 minutes. A manageable chunk of pain, microdosed for maximum efficacy.

After that I catch a glimpse of my damp, red and slightly swollen face in the mirror and think to myself “whew, glad that’s over” but I secretly enjoy the sight of my despair. It looks like a real person and not an emotionless cyborg pretending everything is fine, and for once it actually matches the reality I’m living in before I carry on with my day. Like a reminder to self: you had a great friend who loved you a lot & whom you loved a lot, and now she is gone and you are missing her with all of your heart. 

I need to reflect on that fact several times a day because if I don’t, if I really push it out of my mind long enough, and allow myself to get distracted by escapism and the petty nonsense of the day, it only comes back stronger, on its own terms, and hits me like a truck. 

I’ll be out shopping or in a gathering and suddenly the reality that she’s passed away sinks in like it just happened yesterday, leaving me in raw shock and disbelief. There was no long, drawn-out descent into illness to try to come to terms with or any indication that these were our final conversations when we were discussing hairstyles, work projects and plans to hang out in the future. No, there was only that day, which came without warning. An outer-body experience, a flurry of messages on social media, calling everyone I knew to try and find just one person who would confirm it wasn’t true, only to find the opposite, and then her burial soon after in Algeria which I couldn’t attend in time. And that was it, that was how death came and went, quiet and earth-shattering.

So these traumatic memories are knocking about in my head suddenly and as I said, I am at this point now roaming around aisle three by the eggs pretending to be really engrossed in the price point of Burford Browns, or I’m sitting on the overground train trying to choke back tears sitting opposite the scariest demographic known to man, teenagers, or worse still, at someone’s birthday surrounded by joyful chatty people as I feel myself start to shut down and become unable to converse as my heart races processing the different thoughts I can’t escape from: the future she didn’t have, all the major life events she never got to experience, the wasted time I didn’t get to see her, the long distance between us while she lived abroad, the idea of getting married without her by my side, the silly arguments that were rare in occurrence because she couldn’t handle the smoke, the way she would always rinse me for my romantic choices in my 20s but she would rush to hear all about them first because she loved my telenovela storytelling over a Turkish brunch in our regular place. The protests together at university, the catch ups I’d look forward to all week, the cute little outings to galleries and parks because she was always searching for beauty, and the knowledge that there are a lot of bad people in this world but this girl in all of her nurturing love has my back and my heart… 4lifers, or so I thought.

Somehow at certain moments the painful thoughts about what I’ve lost, how her loved ones are suffering, and what she has missed out on in this life, are replaced by an acute awareness of the love and joy she brought to the world. And the strong, faith-affirming aspect of death feels sobering and clears my head - as a Muslim I firmly believe that the eternal life is the true life. And that my dear friend is still alive out there, probably more worried about me that I am about her. She has visited me in my dreams. She loved God and she talked about death and the reality of life a lot. She was raised in a pious family and understood the purpose and the test of this life. There is comfort in that for all of us who call ourselves believers, and I feel blessed to tap into that spiritual reality when I need it the most.

So really, I’m not hopeless in that sense, I think I just miss seeing her smile. If you never saw that smile light up a room then I feel sorry for you, you really missed out. The best moments of sisterhood are when you’re laughing so hard you can’t catch your breath remembering something funny that happened years ago or some ridiculous situation that only she or I would ever probably find ourselves in. Something we both find hilarious because of our own entwined history together and our overlapping hobbies, our similar percentages of interest in political discourse and celebrity gossip, our shared outlook in many ways as Muslim girls growing up in London and the layers of scrutiny and awareness that brings. But those moments of visceral, uncontrollable laughter until your belly aches, without even the ability to form coherent sentences - those are the moments you feel truly seen.

Our communities can be very cliquey and elitist sometimes in different ways. But Roqiya always rooted for the underdog, she took the time to talk to somebody if they had something interesting to say. She would always make friends with weird and wonderful people, people you wouldn’t expect. I guess I was one of her strange little unexpected friends.

If there is a point to this beyond just making sense of things myself, it is that remembering her is enough of a ritual to get me through this bizarre thing called grief. If her death has broken my heart, then her love nourished me in equal measure. And I may never be able to put it all into words, the many anecdotes, memories and jokes we shared, but I have a lifetime to try and tell those stories in a way that honours her memory. And someday somebody might tell my stories with love and fondness too.

Death is a certainty for all of us, maybe those who go first change how we live out the rest of our lives. It is their final, yet perhaps most long-lasting and far-reaching act on Earth. For sure I will never be the same person I was before, and it feels as though a part of my soul has gone with her. Her time here was short but deeply impactful in a lot of people’s lives and every decision I make will be done in the knowledge of her.

I remembered this quote mentioned in One Day on Netflix, which had my usual blubbering extending from 6 minutes to about 20 minutes - they really need a trigger warning on that for emotionally fragile people… But I thought it was interesting:

“She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year. Her own birthday, and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought, one afternoon, that there was another date, of greater importance than all those; that of her own death; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it?”

― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

As always, prayers for our girl.

Ruqaiya

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