Friend Grief and COVID - Coming 2022
If you’ve ever experienced the death of a friend, you may have been surprised that not everyone believes your grief is important. You may have been unable to get time off work to go to their funeral, or visit them before they died. You may have heard some variation of “well, it’s not like they’re family”. I published my first book - Friend Grief and Anger: When Your Friend Dies and No One Gives a Damn - in 2013. The first of six small books in that series, it fulfilled a promise I made to one of my dearest friends before she died: to write a book about people grieving their friends. Now I’m working on an ambitious, full-length collection of stories from people who have grieved a friend who died during (but not necessarily from) COVID.
If you are one of those people, I’d like to hear from you. Maybe the friend who died was a coworker, or classmate, or neighbor. Maybe you knew them as well as you know yourself, or maybe you only knew them casually. I can’t guarantee your story will make it into the book, but I will find a way to share it. I’m particularly interested in the following groups:
Front-line staff of any profession
Funeral directors and hospice workers
Long-term survivors in the HIV/AIDS community
First responders
Religious communities and spiritual leaders
Performing artists
In addition to hearing from people in those groups, I'm also interested in some bigger questions:
How did your life change after your friend died?
Did you commit to finishing something they were working on?
Did you create a memorial to them?
Or did their death push you to make major life changes?
My deadline for completing interviews is Dec. 31. Some will be in person, some online, some by email. You can contact me at victoria@victorianoe.com.
These are stressful times that compound our grief in unexpected ways. Your participation is greatly appreciated.
