I don't want to tell you how to feel or how to act.IMADreamer wrote: Well my former friend and his new fiancee showed up. It was all about him and her, then he acts like he's been the best friend I've ever had and he was so there for me. Yeah it was real nice of him to come to the visitation for five minutes. What a swell guy.
I feel like I've been kicked while I was down.
But, I will share a story that hopefully sheds a little light on how some people deal with death:
A couple years ago, a really close friend of mine passed away. It was completely unexpected and took everyone by surprise. I have a very tight knit group of friends all of whom I love and respect. When this friend died, it hit everyone hard, especially his family (as you would expect).
I heard about it on a Friday morning and didn't know how to react. My best friend called me to let me know his brother had died the night before. The conversation started off happy, and in a heartbeat he flipped the switch and tried to spit out "There was a car wreck last night and so and so died at the scene" while laughing. It came out as "There was a car wreck" followed by a mixture of inaudible words and sobbing. I immediately wanted to puke. I didn't understand what he said other than judging by his reaction I knew someone had died. He collected himself and finished the sentence. "There was a car wreck and so and so died at the scene" He finished it by saying he had to go and there would be a funeral at some point. Even years later, I still can't think about it and type it out without crying. It was so painful and to experience not only the pain I felt but also my friends complete devastation is simply too much to deal with. It's easily the worst moment of my life.
Obviously, I was in shock. How do you react when something tragic like this happens? Who all knew? What were the plans? How did this happen? How was I supposed to feel? How could I be there for my friends? How could they be there for me? How were we going to deal with this? And, in short, just a feeling of it couldn't be true.
I went to work, comletely numb and sent out a few emails to those I knew were already at work. No one knew. I called one of our close friends and let him know what happened. But, like my buddy, I couldn't get the words out. I completely lost it while on the phone. A 5 second statement took over a minute to get out in between sobs. But, I did. I could tell the guy I was talking to didn't know what to say to make it better. He was a friend of mine and a friend of the guy who called me in the morning to let me know his brother had died. But, he wasn't in particularly good friends with the guy who died.
Anyway, this guy went AWOL. He didn't come to the visitation, he didn't come to the funeral. He texted a few people and said he was sorry and he wasn't going to make it. And, then he just didn't do anything. For like a month or so.
Finally, after some time, we all got together and my friend whose brother died asked the AWOL friend where he was, what he had been doing and basically why he wasn't around. The guy's answer was an honest and understandable response. He basically said: He didn't know what to do. He didn't think he could make anything better. Obviously, everyone is upset at a death, and he can't bring people back to life. He was uncomfortable around other people being so upset and felt inadequate talking about everything because he didn't ahve any answers. He didn't think his absence was painful to anyone because he said if the roles were reversed, and his brother had died, he would have gone into a room and shut himself off from the world and wouldn't want to deal with anyone, so he felt it best to not try to make others uncomfortable by being there.
In short, he apologized if his actions were offensive or hurtful, but he didn't know what else to do and he didn't know how to be supportive, so he reverted to not being around. It wasn't becasue he was an ass hole or because he didn't care or because he was too chicken [expletive] to deal with it. He dealt with it in his own way, by being away from everything.
I guess it makes sense. Everyone deals with everything differently and distance can hurt, especially if its a perceived slight.
Hopefully everything works itself out with your friend, Ima. And hopefully you can understand maybe he is just uncomfortable with death and grief and because he's not good at it, he feels uncomfortable trying to be your support system and chooses to ignore it. And maybe because of that, he's distant and unwilling to talk about what happened and only about himself and be what you perceive as not a good friend/support system.
I don't know anything about anything when it comes to death and tragedy. I just know its horrible and people react differently....
