Losing a Friend
This week has been a hard week – A friend of mine died.
I’ve known Simon for about 20 years. He isn’t an old school-friend, but someone I made a friendship with as an adult. I’ve never found making friends easy but through a shared interest we became chums. For the last 20 years I’ve chatted with Si on-line and then moved onto meeting up in real life.
When he was in London we would catch up and it was always excellent. His job took him across the UK and Europe but he was never too busy to stop for a cup of tea – something we both drank by the bucket-loads.
Earlier this week I got the message and I couldn’t believe it. I honestly thought it was a weird hoax that someone has started. There was nothing on-line about it, and he was posting only a few days ago. It can’t be true, not Si.
I contacted another good friend of ours with a generic enough message “Hey fella, got 5 minutes for a chat?” and when he called me back he knew exactly what my message actually meant. We then spent half an hour just remembering stories and how the three of our lives have been so closely intertwined in the past 20 years.
The funeral is at the end of the month and I’ll be there. I hate funerals and in the last 20 years I’ve turned down most that I’ve been invited to as I can’t stand them. I have attend 3 – a friend from Uni, my 2 nans, and the mum of a very good friend of mine. There could be 20 people there or there could be 100+. Either way, I’ll be there to raise a glass to my friend.
I’ve also had a messages from people I know who also knew him – I think he touched the lives of more people than he realised.
This tribute to him was created and gives a good summary of who Nef was and the people he met along the way.