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We all lose friends: to time, to distance, even to death. When I was seventeen, I lost a part of myself when I lost one of my best friends. I mean, which seventeen-year-old teenager would expect to lose one of their dearest friends to cancer? 

He was one of the last people I met in person before the Covid-19 lockdown. We randomly decided to grab breakfast since I was in the area. I remember saying we should have breakfast together more often. Even after we were stuck at home due to the lockdown, we promised each other that we’d have breakfast together once all of it was over. How do you just accept that a plan so simple would never be able to happen in this lifetime anymore?

Seeing your friend in a casket alters your brain chemistry, a memory somehow so foggy yet vividly engrained in your brain at the same time. The person who was once so alive and energetic, bouncing around in front of you, was now a pale figure lying peacefully in a wooden box before your eyes. Eerie. It was as if a million things were happening around you, yet time stood still between you and the person in the wooden box. Seeing them like that meant that it was finally time to accept that it was all happening; it was real life. You start to feel like you’re drowning, gasping for air and comfort that only they could possibly provide. Honestly, you don’t even bother trying to keep your head afloat, nor do you have the energy to do so.

Their departure will teach you to be grateful for the time you have with the people here, but the time here is without them, so you wonder how you could stay truly grateful. Because no amount of ‘I miss yous’ will bring them back. No matter how many times you look up to the sky and talk to them, you can only cross your fingers and hope that they can hear you. The worst thing? The pain you feel when you say ‘I love you’ to the air and never getting an ‘I love you’ back. Heck, you can’t even be sure they can hear it, let alone feel it. So you start to dwell on how you never said it enough to them when they were alive. But that’s life, isn’t it? You won’t regret something until you’ve seen the less-than-pleasant outcome. 

His passing forced me to wrap my mind around the fact that we really don’t know what tomorrow holds. That imminent fear of losing someone again. The fear amplifies after you’ve been through it all. That’s why you subconsciously cherish little moments with people more, take more pictures to commemorate the little things, ensure every tiny achievement is celebrated, and make people around you feel more appreciated and loved. I hate that it had to be his death that taught me this lesson. But at least he knows that there’s a part of him that will haunt me forever, in the best way possible. 

Losing someone you hold so dear to your heart at seventeen is weird –  you’re mature enough to understand the gravity of the situation and feel all the nasty and confusing emotions, yet you’re not mature enough to be able to process everything as well as you would want to. Wrapping your head around how their life stopped is the worst. Life goes on as if nothing happened yet his life remains stagnant on the day he left the world. You start to feel guilty at every tiny accomplishment you achieve that he was supposed to as well. He would never be able to get a driver’s license; he would never finish his IGCSEs and go to college or university. It just feels wrong, like the course of your world has gone direly off-tangent, yet you just have to accept it and move on. Ultimately, you choose to live your life like how they’d want you to. Not only because that’s the only way that feels like you’re steering back to a ‘right’ path, but also because you know they’d want you to live life in the ways that they couldn’t. So you do, for them. And at every crazy point of trajectory in your life, you look up to the sky and ask, ‘Are you proud of me?’, hoping they’re smiling and nodding at you with both their thumbs up. 

My friend was a firm believer that if he died, no one would bat an eye. Even if people did care, he was sure that people would grieve for a few days, then move on and forget all about him. He was someone who always made sure people felt seen and didn’t feel lonely, because he knew how unpleasant that felt. For the longest time, I believed that I didn’t deserve to call myself his best friend – I didn’t act like one. So when his father said I was one of the few people he’d always mention, I didn’t know what to feel. The remorse grew when I realised how much everyone took him for granted, and only came to show their love during his funeral. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry. Sorry that it had to be something like this that made us show our love towards him. I hope he did feel loved towards the end, though. As much as I know his death meant he was not in pain anymore, I hope he didn’t feel lonely in the hospital bed. A big part of me was angry that I didn’t stand my ground with my mother when I wanted to visit him in the hospital that night, but a part of me also knew that I wouldn’t have been able to pull myself back together if I saw him flatline right before my eyes.  

Losing a close friend at a young age also ignites a newfound fear in you – the fear of forgetting. Forgetting their voice, forgetting the memories you’ve shared with them. Because the truth is, his voice has started to fade a little in my head, and the idea that I might one day forget his voice terrifies me. The words he would say and the reactions he would have, the sound of his laugh, all the moments we’ve shared. Sometimes, I feel like I’m grasping at strings, struggling to hold on to bits and pieces of him that I never want to forget. Though I’m sure there are some things that have already disappeared from my memory. 

Death anniversaries are weird because you realise that your life has moved forward so much since they left. Everyone’s life has moved on, but he’s standing behind us, watching us grow, dust collected all around him, right where he left us and we left him. Reusing the same pictures over and over again when you want to post about them will never stop breaking your heart because that’s how few pictures of them you have, and you’re not getting any more. And, every day that goes by is an aching reminder that you’re one day further away from the last time you were with them.

In another world, he’s sitting across from me in a coffee shop where we’re having breakfast. I’d tell him about how every year on my birthday, I think about how he once went out of his way to buy ingredients that he would never get for himself, just to wake up extra early to cook a birthday lunch for me. We’d argue about how strawberry milk does or does not taste dreadful. We’d still be able to rant to each other, and he’d give his awfully comical interpretations of each situation, then give me his two cents. I’d give him a high-five before I go and tell him he’s irreplaceable in my heart. 

You eventually have to learn to live with grief because you come to terms that you never stop grieving. The void will always be there though, since he was such a huge part of my life. I would do anything to be able to eat something he cooked again and talk to him for hours on end. But I know that his memory will live on as long as I live because everyone I love will know and hear about him. People get weird and unsettled when talking about death, but I don’t talk about him in an attempt to seek consolation. Rather, I talk about him because I want his memory to live on. I want people to know how amazing he is, and for me to be happy whenever I mention him. Plus, I bet he’s somewhere beaming whenever I talk about him, especially knowing I wrote an article about him. 

So here’s to you, Benson, my (hopefully) guardian angel and ‘forever friend’. I will never not wonder how life would be if you didn’t stay at seventeen.