Laying It All Bare: My Experience with Loss

The first time my best friend died, I was sixteen.

Clay Clark was actually best friend to many, but he happened to be my only friend left at the high school I attended. He died at school, literally dropped dead due to an enlarged heart. I knew several people that saw him die. I saw him later at the hospital, when his body had been lifeless for a few hours, and then I saw him a few days later at the funeral. This is the first and only time that death has felt real to me.

I experienced Clay's death as part of a group. Clay and I belonged to the same church, and the youth group stayed together for about a week, migrating from house to house and sometimes sleeping at the church. We held each other and cried together, we told stories, we skipped school together, and we helped each other learn how to live and breath again.

I changed schools the next year. I couldn't bear to face my previous school alone, to walk the halls that Clay and I had walked together. I had to start over, and starting over was less scary and less difficult than continuing the same path alone. I became a new person because it was easier. But now, looking back at my sixteen-year-old self, everything seemed easier then.

My grandmother died about five years ago. She had been in a nursing home for several years, slowly fading away to dementia. When she died, it was time, but we had also already lost her. It wasn't so harsh because it happened a little bit every day instead of all at once. Everyone was ready. Her death ended her own suffering and the quiet, desperate plight of those around her. My family could finally begin again.

My best friend died again on May 26, 2012. I was twenty-seven years old. Besides pets, this is the sum total of death I have experienced in my life.

I haven't talked about Dana much since she passed, not like everyone else has. I still exist in disbelief.

I am a huge Harry Potter fan. In the fifth book, Harry's godfather falls through The Veil, the barrier between the living and the dead. He didn't die; he simply ceased to exist among the living. He was trapped in an abyss, in a limbo-type situation. I was so far removed from the event that it feels like Dana fell through The Veil.

"He had the strangest feeling that there was someone standing right behind the veil on the other side of the archway. Gripping his wand very tightly, he edged around the dais, but there was nobody there; all that could be seen was the other side of the tattered black veil."

—Harry Potter encountering the Veil.

The last time I saw Dana, she was alive and well in Mobile preparing for a trip to Las Vegas. And then she didn't come back. Everyone was removed from the event. No one saw her body, no one saw the accident. Everyone involved is thousands of miles away.

Kula Yoga Community is much larger than any youth group and, at its heart, much more cohesive. I've never had more emotional support or more shoulders to cry on in my life, but I've never felt so alone (which is my own fault). I feel deeply obligated to be strong as the only director Kula has now, and in doing so, I've isolated myself. I've left the processing to the quiet and lonely times--lying in bed before falling asleep, sitting alone in the park by her house, shopping alone, watching a movie in a dark theater. I cry at awkward times in crowded places, and only sometimes my husband is there to catch me in his arms. I'm crying now, as I write this, in the coffee shop a few blocks from my house where Dana and I used to meet to work on payroll or discuss marketing.

I can't start over. I feel like Kula can and has begun fresh, but I've had to continue a job two people did, but now as only one person. There are so many people working with me, and I know I could not truly do this by myself. It is a community effort because it was designed to be, and given the same scenario, I wouldn't do anything differently. But how I feel is how I feel.

I'll never have a friend like Dana again. Remembering her now, she feels like a super hero, larger than life. She took care of me when I was sick, helped me pick out clothes, was always honest with me, but always accepted me for who I was. She helped me train my dogs, she was the only person I could come to when I had an argument with my husband, and she was a good business partner, mentor, and teacher. I'm sure she had her shortcomings, and I probably knew them better than most people, but I can't remember them. Now I feel like I have to run Gotham City without Batman. I'm pretty sure the Commissioner would throw in the towel.

People still ask me what they can do, and my only answer is still "attend classes," because I don't know how to stop this self-destructive pattern of isolation. I guess this--laying it all bare--is the first step.

There is one more thing you can do: Donate to the Dana Goudie Memorial Scholarship fund at KulaYogaCommunity.org.