After Collette’s death, I quickly found out that I did not have as many friends as I thought I had. Many were actually Collette’s friends. I have discovered that my bereaved men friends have had similar experiences. This reality should come as no surprise because women typically have a more active social life than most men, one of those little differences between the sexes that we hear about sometimes.

That being said, after the death of a loved one, life is forever changed. The Saturday night bridge game that you enjoyed with special friends is gone. You are now a single in a couple’s world. In the worst-case scenario, you could even be seen as a threat.

Eventually, you find that old friends will invite you, as usual, to dinners and other gatherings. However, you may find that these occasions are now different, sometimes leaving you with an empty feeling. There is nothing worse than having to leave a gathering of friends to go home alone to an empty house. Most of us have experienced this feeling, understandably, because we are now single again, and the rest of our friends are still paired off as couples. Of course, friends will be kind and will try to include you in their activities, but the experience will not be the same.

Frankly, I was puzzled at this feeling, or should I say, these different feelings. My good friend, Vi George, explained their significance to me.

Old friends bring with them years of old memories that you shared with your loved one. Perhaps your children have grown up together. You have probably belonged to the same clubs or faith community. Now that you are single again, the combination of old friends and good memories of other times makes, at times, for an empty feeling. It’s no wonder that sometimes we do feel uneasy in such circumstances. However, after a time you will, as I did, be able to share your wonderful memories with your new friends. We all have stories to tell, and it is good for us to share them.

As usual, I listened carefully to Vi, and her observations made sense. The new friends that I met at the Bereavement Self- Help Social Group have had similar experiences. You will discover that you do not have to explain your feelings simply because your new friends understand. They will tell you about their experiences, listen to yours, and give you what I describe as caring understanding. Most of all, you will feel safe in sharing your feelings because you are not alone. One of the givens in the social group is that people will neither ask questions, nor will they give advice.

Vi, of course, was right. It was useful for me to hear about her own experience that helped her to feel more at ease with her new friends. As time goes by, new friends become old friends, some closer than others.

This is a good time for all of us to remember to be gentle with our friends, to try to understand that they are also feeling loss. It may be difficult for them to express their feelings properly. They may be unable to help, not because they are unfeeling but because they are fearful of saying or doing the wrong thing. Not all of us are able to express how we feel in words.

At the time of writing this piece, the Bereavement Self-Help Social Group is close to celebrating its 16th anniversary. Over these years, I have been impressed at the long-term friendships that have developed. One would think, with the large number of people whom we have seen, that it would be normal to see cliques develop. That has not been the case. True, there are groups of folks with similar interests, like the bridge players, but on the whole, the social group has somehow retained its original closeness throughout the years.

Friendship:

If nobody smiled, if nobody cared
And nobody helped us along.
If each, every minute looked after himself
And the good things all went to the strong,
If nobody cared just a little for you,
And nobody thought about me;
And we stood all alone in the battle of life,
What a dreary old world it would be.