How can he really be gone?!

The last few days have been nothing but a blur, like time has stood still and moved forward at the same time.  I'm at a loss, not knowing how to think or even feel.  I know that loss occurs, that death happens but it's not supposed to happen to someone so close to me.....to someone so full of life...to someone so young but the reality of it all is that death shows no mercy.  It takes you regardless of age or race, regardless of male or female. There is no discrimination, no matter how lonely you are or how loved you are, whether you've accomplished a lot or nothing at all.  It waits not for you to become a spouse, a parent or even a grandparent, but will snatch you up early in your life, late in life or smack dab right in the middle of your life.

God has his reason for it and while we should think how lucky that person is to be free from the chaos of this world, from the obvious hell on Earth, we are also human and that selfish side never wants to lose them.  We never want to feel that debilitating and devastating pain, that horrific ache from losing a person who meant so much.  It doesn't have to be a blood relative for you to experience the pain from a death.  Whether a parent, sibling, grandparent, or child, you are connected to them based on DNA.  A friend you are not, so a friend is just a friend, right?   WRONG!  A friend is someone you choose to bring into your life, into your family, someone that you love like family which means their death is just as hard.  The pain of losing your friend is equivalent to the pain of losing your relative.

I lost my best friend (well. . .one of them) and I know that loss will forever change me.  The hurt is so great that there are moments that I feel that I am suffocating.  I have all the good memories in my head but it makes my heart ache even more because I know that there can never be any new memories.  I am further plagued with guilt because over the last maybe 6 months or so, I have not seen him much or talked to him as regularly, regardless though I cared for him as much as my own brothers.  Best friends are always like extensions of your family.  They are "partners in crime," the one(s) you go to when you don't feel like being grown up and just want to do something stupid or sometimes even juvenile.  But they are also there when you need them the most, through troubled times, heartbreak or in my case when your only daughter gets married.

You know you've chosen well when your best friends pack up and travel out of state to be there for you, to support you knowing how much your daughter's wedding is actually affecting you.  How about a best friend offering to walk your daughter down the aisle because her own father is absent?  My daughter and I just cried when he said this.  You know, friends like that are far and few between and when you lose them, it's a great loss, a devastating loss.  That kind of friend can never be replaced.

So....I sit here today still in a daze, waiting for someone to pinch me, to tell me it isn't true, that it is a mistake, that he is okay, but the pain in my heart that I feel which radiates deep down to my core tells me differently.  The lack of posts on Facebook or Instagram, lack of Snapchats to me and my daughter using goofy filters, the fact that I've not heard crickets chirping from my phone to indicate a new text from him in four days are painfully clear indications that he's just. . . . gone. Gone. . . how can he be gone....how can that be true?!  I cannot even fathom the thought, yet I have to. I'm supposed to accept it, but I don't want to.  I just cannot bear the silence, don't know how I will ever be able to live the rest of my life knowing that I'll never speak to him again. . . that I'll never see him again.  Losses this great changes everything.