When I lost one of my closest friends to suicide last in 2023, my world tilted, irrevocably, on its axis. In the first six months after her death, the world felt wrong around me—a sick and broken place where even opting out inflicts more pain. The humorous absurdity of life turned into a terrifying absurdity, and it seemed the only truth was that life is loss. I became both harder and softer, and my boundaries became walls, behind which a part of me was untouchable and unknowable. Breaches occurred with friends who hadn’t experienced grief, and bridges were built with strangers who had.
I had lost people in my life before, but they were elderly and the losses had been expected. I had never lost a young person suddenly. Suicide also brings its own particular pain of regret and doubt, and a layer of shame that makes mourning that much harder. During this time, I had many awkward interactions with people in which I confronted, head-on, the reluctance and discomfort that most people have in talking about death. Rather than resent them for it, I began to see those who couldn’t grapple with it as lucky, because usually it meant they had never had to. I wished for them that they would remain that way as long as possible—because wishing for them to understand was wishing for them to have been touched by a horrifying death themselves, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I moved through the world as a different person, my entire perspective coloured by the loss of my friend. I bumped up against remembrances of her in places that I couldn’t predict. I began to understand that the suicide support hotlines included at the end of news articles are there not just for those who feel suicidal, but also for those bereaved by suicide. At times I wanted to be swaddled in some sort of protective film that would remind people to handle me with care, without my having to explain my personal situation to them.
It was then that I began to think about the multiple practical benefits of mourning dress—a custom pretty much discontinued in western culture. I had always thought about mourning dress only as a show of respect to the dead, and a means of controlling women through complex courting rituals and signals of availability. I had never thought about how swathing yourself in black also reminded people to treat you more gently, that it was a recognition of a cataclysmic event in your life. I think back to sobbing hysterically in a club on my 30th birthday, and a kindly older friend trying to comfort me by saying that ageing is difficult, that he struggled with it every year too. When I explained through tears that I wasn’t crying about getting older, but because my friend had died and I was turning an age she never got to turn, he went “Oh”, and stopped speaking. How much easier it would have been for both of us if he had seen that, without me having to say.
Of course, black crepe and gloves and veils that shortened over months of mourning were reserved for familial relationships, and didn’t recognise the significance of friendships. And I don’t believe in anyone being forced to wear anything—but for the first time I considered how these practices may have brought consolation to people grieving. To have your pain so clearly telegraphed saves you the burden of expressing it yourself, or the mortification of dealing with situations that feel so incongruent with how you are feeling. I watched The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947) recently, and one line, spoken to a woman in “widow’s weeds”, stayed with me, as rentals were offered “suitable to a young lady in bereaved circumstances”. I wished a similar consideration could have been extended to me sometimes. What a relief it would have been.
If you or anyone you know has been affected by the issues in raised in this article, you can call the Samaritans any time on 116 123.
