‘My fiancé died, then I lost our shared friendships, too’
There’s a peculiar atmosphere that unfolds when you enter a room as a young widow. As I walked into a sea of black at my fiancé Ben’s funeral reception in mid-December 2020, I could feel it — a palpable discomfort in a room already thick with grief.
I guess funerals aren’t exactly known for being the most uplifting social engagements. But my presence seemed to amplify the usual awkward dance of small talk around the refreshments table tenfold. I wasn’t just Lotte, Ben’s bride-to-be, anymore — I was his 30-year-old widow, a living, breathing cautionary tale that sometimes life goes spectacularly off-script.
If I’d written down everything I’d ever wanted in a partner, Ben would have fit the profile perfectly. I’d swiped right on his profile on a dating app in 2014, a couples of months after I’d turned 24. After some questionable relationships in my teens and early 20s, he was the textbook Prince Charming that put the pieces my exes had broken back together again.
We’d been together for four and a half blissful years when I discovered the lump that marked the beginning of the end. A biopsy and MRI scan in July 2019 revealed a stage three soft tissue sarcoma in his upper thorax — a cancer notoriously difficult to treat.
I convinced myself that the diagnosis would simply mark a bad moment in time that we could wipe our hands clean of after treatment. But in March 2020, a follow-up scan showed metastases in both of his lungs. It was terminal. He died eight months later from cancer and Covid complications at a treatment centre in Mexico, blowing my life as I’d come to know it into smithereens.
At the funeral, as I did the rounds between Ben’s various friendship groups in a fog of acute grief, lukewarm tea in hand, I caught snippets of well-meaning promises that would soon be broken.
“We’ll always be here for you,” his uni friends assured me in-between bites of his favourite sandwiches. “Let us know if there’s anything you need.”
His death, I’d soon learn, would set off an aftershock that would change everything — especially my ties to his circle of friends. Before long, I would find myself navigating not only the deep ache of grief, but also the disorienting shift of relationships that had once felt solid.
Unable to face returning to our flat and enduring lockdown alone, I moved into my mum and stepdad’s house in the Cotswolds upon returning to England. In those first few weeks after Ben had died, there were tentative check-ins and awkward Zoom calls with his uni group, where they would look at me with a mixture of sympathy and fear. I’d hoped that our grief would bring us closer together, but as the weeks stretched into months, their messages became fewer and further between.
Each unanswered text felt like a tiny bereavement in itself — another way of losing him all over again. I felt abandoned by them in my time of need. As the months stretched on though, I started to wonder if I had become a trigger for them. I found myself questioning things: perhaps Ben had been the glue that had held our connections together in the first place. Would we have been friends if it weren’t for him? I was desperate to stay connected to him through the people who knew him best, but were they truly my people or just an extension of the life we’d shared? The answer, I realised, was probably the latter.
It was as if his death acted as a kind of litmus test, revealing the true nature of the connections I’d built over the years. Some friendships are for a season, a reason, or a lifetime. Grief has a way of clarifying which is which. It’s painful, it’s messy, but there’s beauty in it, too. While some friendships washed away like sandcastles against the tide of grief, others took root and flourished.
In the depths of my grief, acquaintances were quick to step up in ways I never expected. Like Jen, a colleague of Ben’s, who, after hearing the news, boarded a plane to Mexico to be by my side. Our conversations weren’t profound or deep, they were just... normal. Those moments of lightness were a reminder that good things still existed in the world.
Meanwhile, my best friends rallied around me constantly. During the lonely months of lockdown, care packages were delivered on an almost weekly basis — an eclectic mix of chocolate, weighty philosophical books, pillow mist, jewellery, and scented candles. Their efforts spoke volumes: ‘We can’t take the pain away, but we’ll do what we can to comfort you.’
By the time Covid regulations lifted the following spring, they lured me back into the land of the living, with strategically planned nights out and festivals abroad. They mastered the art of holding space for me to ugly-cry over Ben’s favourite song one minute and laugh about his dance moves the next. They never tried to diminish my grief or hurry me through it, but instead learned to sit with me in the mess of it all. They said his name, shared stories about him. In doing so, they didn’t just support me — they helped keep a part of him alive. Our friendships grew stronger as a result.
But perhaps the most unexpected shift came from joining the grief community. In those lonely winter months, I’d spend countless sleepless nights scrolling through hashtags on Instagram in search of others who ‘got it’. In my DMs, I formed connections with other young widows and widowers who knew what it felt like to lose the person they couldn’t live without. I could laugh at the morbid comedy of dating apps with them, swap notes on all the tone-deaf things people said, and confess to sleeping with Ben’s unwashed t-shirt without feeling as if I’d gone mad.
As I began to rebuild my life — eventually moving to Lisbon, discovering my passion for writing, and opening my heart to new love — I found my friendships changing once again. Here, I stumbled upon more than just a new home. I discovered the kind of community I’d always dreamed of, but had never quite managed to cultivate in London’s vast and often isolating sprawl. My best friends here live just ten minutes away from mine, we see each other multiple times a week, and there’s never any shortage of fun plans. These friends, who never knew Ben, have embraced him as if he were an old friend. They honour who I was with him, while championing the person I’m becoming. I’m certain we’ll be best friends for life.
If you’re wanting to support a friend through loss, know this: you can’t make it better, because grief isn’t something to be fixed. Instead, just be there; to hold their hand, to sit in silence, to listen without rushing to fill in the gaps. It’s not about having the perfect words — it’s about having the courage to say, ‘I’m here’, and actually mean it, even when you feel awkward and unsure. Grief can feel incredibly lonely, but knowing someone is willing to walk beside you can make all the difference.
In her debut book, Bittersweet: A Story of Love and Loss, Lotte shares the story of her and Ben’s relationship, and of rediscovering joy amid her grief. Buy it here.
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