Making Meaning Out of Losing a Best Friend

This post is both a personal and vulnerable one. Somber at times, with bits of comic relief… I suggest buckling up for the ride.

Chances are that if you’re reading this, you’re already primed and likely even interested to unpack grief and loss. While it’s a largely painful experience, I find that sharing and hearing stories from others about losing a loved one can often feel validating and provide some sense of connection – like we’ve been down a similar hole and are finding our way out.

My hope is that sharing this story of dealing with grief will resonate with you, some way, somehow. Not because I wish for you to lose someone important, but because we almost all do. Yet, for some reason, it still feels taboo to discuss grief, loss, and death, at least in American society.

If you ever or have ever experienced this kind of loss at some point, I encourage you not to ignore your feelings, not to force a smile when someone asks you how you’re coping, not to brush off the emotional toll it takes on you… but to think critically about the meaning that loss has given you in your life.

There is no timeline for finding this meaning. It could become apparent within days. For some it might take decades. If you want to find it, you will. If you resist – if you focus only on the loss, the pain, the suffering – you might not.

Most importantly, give yourself a break. It’s freakin’ hard. If you’re (un)lucky enough to share your grief over a loved one with someone, talk to them about it. Connection is the best kind of healing.

It was December 24, 2007. Like any Jewish kid on Christmas, I was literally on my way out the door of my childhood home in Jersey to go catch a movie with one of my best friends (lucky me, I had 3) when I got the call. It was Rob’s mom.

“Bagel,” forcing the words out, audibly sobbing and seemingly holding herself together with every ounce of emotional energy she had…

“I want to let you know that Rob passed away today. He went kayaking in the lake and they found him capsized in the freezing cold water. They tried to Air Evac him to the hospital, but he didn’t make it.”

That’s all I heard before my brain and body shut down.

First was, not surprisingly, shock, followed by extreme sadness, anger, and confusion.

I didn’t know how to respond. Was this real? This is the type of call you see in the movies:

Not two minutes before I was on my way to laugh my butt off at John C. Reilly’s parodic performance in Walk Hard, and now I’m forced to grapple with the freezing cold, hard truth (pun slightly intended) that one of my best friends just died.

Not only that, but I now had the responsibility of sharing this news with the two other closest friends, as Rob’s Mom wasn’t close enough with them at the time.

I immediately called Joel – trying to hold it together so as not to scare him to death – demanding that he come over immediately, that I couldn’t drive anywhere. Meanwhile, I got the call from another friend who knew Rob longer than I did. Neither one of us knew what to say.

I shared the news when Joel arrived. We cried and cried and hugged and cried. It was awful. And yet comforting. He gives the best hugs.

We finally got ourselves together enough to drive to his house, when we then called Mike and instructed him to drive a few minutes down the road to meet us. If I remember correctly, I asked Joel to make the call this time. I couldn’t handle another one at this point.

Mike was resistant: “It’s Christmas Eve, I’m with my family, what’s the matter?”

“You have to come over here, we need to tell you in person,” exclaimed Joel, almost still in disbelief himself.

He reluctantly agreed. I was never quite able to clean the enormous snot stain on my faux-suede jacket after he finally let go of me, after we shared the news.

It was so unclear to me how and why this could happen. On Christmas Eve, no less.

For some reason that moment was the hardest. It somehow felt more real with the two of them by my side. It was a moment: the three of us standing there, in the flesh, together… And Rob was not.

I had just seen him the night before. He had come over for a few days, as was the norm once he moved down to South Jersey. It was my senior year, and we were on winter break. We made some sort of fajita chicken with frozen peppers and onions. My parents were out of town, and my uncle made his annual visit to watch over my brother and the house while they were gone.

While Rob was visiting, the two of us met up with another friend at AAA’s travel center nearby to get a bunch of physical maps to plan out our epic cross-country road trip we were finally going to take once I graduated.

Rob showed us the routes he wanted to take. I traced the map with my finger to show the way my Dad went when he made the trek west with his brother and best friend when he was in his 20s.

We had our whole lives ahead of us, so it seemed.

And then, just like that, he was gone.

Over the years, there were probably a thousand different ways that we all made meaning of Rob’s departure from the physical world.

I’ll never forget watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, almost 4 years later. It seems so silly now. If I recall correctly, it was the episode where Ray and his family go to Italy, and he gets a pizza from a street vendor. After dealing with the usual antics with his family, the episode ends with him rejoicing, simply appreciating how delicious the fresh tomato and mozzarella were, the breathtaking vistas, and how the little things in life can provide so much joy.

I lost it.

I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe because Rob and I had so many conversations analyzing the world and the people in it, yet we both found the most pure joy and fun in the simplest things:

• Taking in the morning air on a warm and sunny summer day

• Having a catch

• Riding bikes to the Milk Box or Scoops

• Playing Triple Play Baseball: Golden Edition in the garage-turned-game room

But I’m not sure that was what broke me down.

I think it had something to do with relating Raymond’s experience in this episode to witnessing Rob’s pure joy as a kid. Or maybe it was an Italian thing. I don’t know.

Truthfully, I had a tough time finding happiness as a kid with all that my family and brother endured. When I met Rob at 11 years old in the infamous “Old Neighborhood” (more on that infamous day later), I found someone in life who was a goofball, but was also intelligent and insanely creative. I saw how he was capable of making his own fun with his imagination. In that crazy head, there was:

• Barry the Bodybuilder who was gonna &!*^ you up (it was his cat)

• The evil Mr. Tuttle, President of the Homeowner’s Association

• “Chest Hairs,” “Chris Buckwheat,” “Out-of-Shape-O,” “The Godfather,” “Mr. Cat Man Mustache,” “Greg the Terminator,” and “the legend of Nutsack Jack” (picture the boogeyman who lives in the woods)

• Characterizing my 7-year-old brother as a tricycle gang leader with a potty mouth

• The endless carousel of embellished stories, claiming to every new friend we made that:

  • Rob got introduced to me by me taking a bite out of his leg (seriously, where did he even come up with this stuff?)

  • Our friend had a tooth on his male genitalia

  • His dad, after getting kicked by a horse, got up and punched said horse in its face…

• Fantasizing about one day reaching the sacred “Grasslands” in the distance from the Green Gully, where dreams come true and the sun lifts you into the sky like an angel

• Later, when we were older: Driving around aimlessly on a Friday night exclaiming, “Bagel, let’s go save the world tonight.”

You know, kid stuff.

Anyone that knew him who reads this will bark at me for leaving out their favorite “Rob story.” He was that kind of friend with everyone he knew. This list goes ON and ON and ON.

Rob opened me up to a world that was centered around possibility rather than suffering. It was future-oriented instead of living in the past. It was a world full of curiosity, exposure, and sure, occasionally some light-hearted ridicule (I got called plenty of names that I won’t repeat here).

All of this to say, losing him was equated with losing a big part of myself. A part that I didn’t know I had, and surely didn’t how to replace.

Reflecting back, I know one thing for sure. Getting to know Rob brought me out of a sinking depression at a young and fragile stage.

Remembering Rob brings me gratitude for all of the ways he pushed me out of my comfort zone.

Losing Rob, while painstaking, brought me closer to my core group of friends – the Crüe” – and has taught me never to take a friendship for granted. Sure, it’s morbid, but it’s worth spelling out - you truly don’t know how much time you’re going to have with anyone in this world.

I vowed, from that point forward, to be more direct in telling the people in my life how I feel about them, that I care about them, to savor the moments I have with them. To ensure I would never again lose precious moments with the people I loved.

For context, I identify as a spiritual person. Sometimes, I ask myself: Was I truly only meant to know Rob for the 10 years that we had?

In retrospect, those were the most formative and, dare I say, purist years of my life, and I couldn’t have asked for a better friend to learn from, explore with, and, let’s be honest – as a sheltered private-school kid – rag on me enough to break me into the real world.

In another light, it feels like hardly any time at all, and ages ago. Like another lifetime. So much so, that I question if some of these memories are even real.

At this point it doesn’t matter. The feelings are real, even if the memories are slightly fabricated. The memories mean a lot to me, to who I am, to who I’ve become. Being able to cherish a friend, a “brother,” for all the ways that he shaped me, impacted me, and taught me to find joy and comedy and spirit in the world around me, is a gift.

This gift, the gift of knowing Rob for the short time he was here, is what gives my life more meaning.

Fast forward to December 2022. While I can’t take full credit, I was told I gave new meaning to the day, to Christmas Eve.

It is and forever will be the day that Rob left us.

It will also be the day that I asked my two other best friends, Joel and Mike, to be co-best men at our wedding this fall.

Yes, it feels like a great way to honor Rob.

Just as much, it feels like an even better way to honor my most-cherished friendships, now and forever.

Let’s all go save the world tonight

RG 12.24.07