Friends, Impact of Death Of

In a postmodern era when friendship is often more highly prized than in previous generations, many individuals create a family of investment or a family of friends to enhance, supplement, or replace the family of origin. For others, kinship and friendships overlap: “My mother was my best friend” or “John was like a brother to me.” Funeral ritual, estate inheritance law, and custom [Page 463]still favor bloodline for grief recognition, ritual planning and participation, and social support. A friend, although emotionally closer to the deceased than some or all kin, is generally excluded from the inheriting and from making or challenging funeral rituals. Corporate bereavement leave policies rarely recognize grief for a friend. Consequently, some find their grief for a friend—or the intensity of the grief for a particular friend—discounted or disenfranchised.

Friendgrief is significant. Given an estimated 2.25 million deaths per year in the United States, and assuming a dozen friends are impacted per death, the grief of millions of friendgrievers is disenfranchised with dismissive responses like, “She was only a friend.”

Individuals grieving for friends have been identified as survivor-friends, hidden grievers, forgotten grievers, and friendgrievers. Friendgrief is complicated for grievers who have not yet found a word or phrase to capture their loss. This entry first reviews the fluidness of definition and impreciseness of the use of the word friend and offers a brief discussion of the ways this friendgrief can be enfranchised. Finally, implications for clinical care and social policy modification are addressed.

Friend: The Concept

Historically, death rituals were a tribal experience in which family and friends grieved in tandem. Over the past century, funeral rituals have become primarily family-centered, with nonfamily relegated to the margin. But what does a particular griever mean when using friend in a lament such as “My friend died last week”? Friend is an umbrella word covering a wide variety of friendly relationships. One needs a qualifier to comprehend a griever's use of friend: best friend, old friend, longtime friend, girlfriend, childhood friend, close friend, casual friend, or true blue or longtime friend. The relationship may be so fluid that yesterday's best friend is today's close friend or ex-friend. Three common categories—casual friend, close friend, and best friend—are complemented by synonyms such as pal, confidante, best bud, buddy, mate, and compadre.

The absence of a straightforward definition for friend creates confusion. Dictionary definitions generally emphasize non-blood-related, nonmarried, and nonsexual relationships. Many, however, would challenge the exclusiveness of that definition—“but I consider my spouse to be my best friend.”

Until recently, researchers were unaware of, or unconcerned for, the large population of grieving friends. Grief recognizes no boundaries of law or kinship and is a reality for those who friend and who have been friended. As the baby boomers die, large numbers of survivors will face grief over long-term friendships. Many will discover that the emotions stimulated by a friend's death can be as or more severe than grief for family members. Some friends' grief will be disenfranchised, or the intensity or duration discounted, even by cofriends or mutual friends.

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