Femke is in a new phase of mourning a friend.
It’s strange to read a WhatsApp conversation between yourself and someone who is no longer alive. For the first time since my friend Els died, I’m staring at our entire app conversation, from start to finish. Exactly one year ago we sent each other the last ‘normal’ message. Me: “Did I tell you we have two kittens?” She: ‘Oh, how nice for Nathan!’ And that while she was a cat hater. “Cats always show you their butts. Horrible beasts they are!’ she could say with great affection.
I am in a new phase of grief. We’ve been through the shock, the denial, the anger, and the sadness, and now it’s time for the acceptance phase. A few weeks ago I thought I had arrived there. That I had given her death a clichéd spot.
I could almost sigh: oh, that’s how life goes. It even went so far that I didn’t feel anything at all and started to doubt my love for Els. I let the thought ‘Els is dead’ roll through my head and there was zero emotion. Now I know that too was transient. It seems like the penny is falling deeper every day. The sense of death has many layers. I’ll never get a message from her again. She’s never going to say anything that infuriates me again. She will never look at me understandingly again when I tell about the bumps with Nathan. I will never talk to her for seven hours straight again. People who die disappear to an elusive place.
Can you ever get used to that? Will I learn to deal with it if it happens to me more often? Now every few days I stare at the same fact (Els is dead) and it slaps me in the face again. I’m surprised again, in shock, furious and sad. Life goes on, the weeks rush over me. I know I should focus on the future, but I look back. A year ago we knew nothing. Not much later we thought she had three years left, but within a few months she was gone. It went too fast and I’m still walking around shaking my head. The penny hasn’t hit the bottom yet.
Femke Sterken (41) is a freelance journalist. She lives with Oscar and son Nathan (8) in Ouderkerk.