I Lost My Best Friend At 27. I’ll Keep The Magic She Brought To My Life Forever.
In so many words, I always knew that death would touch my life as family and loved ones aged—it was the cycle of life. While I had experienced the difficult passing of all four of my grandparents in my 31 years and the sadness of losing my Uncle to cancer in high school, I was the least bit prepared to lose my best friend at 27. My entire world flipped upside down.
Grief was something I was familiar with, but it took on a new meaning when there were seemingly no answers as to why my best friend and I were FaceTiming and sending laugh-inducing messages one day, and the next day, I was met with deafening silence and confusion.
I met my best friend Lindsey through a mutual friend when we both did the Disney College Program in 2016. She was all of the things I admired in a friend; she was incredibly creative, unintentionally funny, honest, and offered some of the best advice I’ve ever received to this day. We immediately bonded over our love of musicals, our shared experiences of going on family trips to Disney World growing up, gushing over crushes, and we quickly learned that we operated on the same wavelength. We could communicate with a simple look and immediately, we knew what the other was thinking about a certain situation or conversation around us.
I grew up as the only girl between two brothers and never had the privilege of having a sister but in what seemed like lightning speed, Lindsey became one to me practically instantaneously.
We both had the idea to start our own small business, selling graphic apparel inspired by our favorite pop culture movies and shows. Albeit crazy, we only really knew each other a few months before we decided to open up our own business — which, although risky, paid off tenfold. Not only did I get to leave my stress-inducing job at the time, she also stepped away from a position she also wasn’t loving and we took a leap. And our business My Oh My Supply Co. was born. We spent just about every single day in communication or in-person together, building our dream side-by-side and making it our full-time jobs.
I’m convinced, looking back now, that God knew what we didn’t—that her time earth side would come to a close far before it should have.
Because of this, our business fast-tracked and became far more successful than we could have ever imagined, and not only did we grow professionally and learn how to work together, our friendship and bond also blossomed, and she was undoubtedly my best friend and built-in sister.
Before I met Lindsey, I started volunteering with Comfort Zone Camp, a safe space for kids and teenagers to come together and grieve their loved ones. I volunteered as a big buddy for the first time back in 2015, and little did I know at the time that grief would truly impact my life in a new way a mere six years later. I’m a firm believer that friends are your chosen family, and Lindsey was mine. When I found out in December of 2021 that she had suffered from a brain aneurysm a day after we had exchanged Christmas gifts and celebrated her new apartment, I felt like I had entered the Twilight Zone.
I had spent Thursday with her and called her the following day on Friday to find out that later that Friday night, she was on her way to the hospital.
In full transparency, I thought I knew what grief was, but the rollercoaster I would ride from that point on, I knew it would never leave me. It presented itself in so many different ways. I was angry, sad, depressed, anxious, and felt a ridiculous amount of guilt – questioning whether my grief was presenting itself properly to people around me. Did I seem upset enough? Was I not crying enough? Did I seem like I was too happy enjoying other things in my life for a brief moment when I wasn’t simultaneously thinking about her? Was I only ever talking about her to people around me? I questioned what the right way to grieve was, and I think the simple answer is that there isn’t one. I worked through it and lived with it, as painful as it was. With the grief came fear and anxiety that I myself or others I loved would have something similar happen. It was paralyzing and made me worry about many things out of my control.
After seeing a therapist and keeping her memory alive with the friends we shared, my grief didn’t go away, but it became manageable. I’ve tried to live every day with purpose since Lindsey passed, and I will never stop talking about her.
Not seeing her name pop up on my phone screen regularly or the inability to be able to send her something that I know would make her laugh uncontrollably still makes me tear up. However, with time, I now smile more and think fondly of how positively she impacted my life when the grief creeps in. Through her passing, her other best friend, Sierra, and I developed a friendship that feels as close as possible to experiencing Lindsey’s magic. We get to share all of our favorite memories, talk about life, and continue the friendship we each had with Lindsey but now with each other, and I am forever grateful for her in my life.
If you’ve experienced the loss of a friend, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced, but the cliché ‘it gets better’ has some truth to it. Although grief ebbs and flows in time, what I learned from Comfort Zone Camp and in my own healing journey is that grief isn’t linear. And there’s no wrong way to grieve.
The magic Lindsey brought to my life I get the honor of keeping forever, even without her physically here, and for that I’m immensely grateful.
By: Ali Faccenda
