Trigger warning: this piece references suicide.
Memory is a funny thing, especially if there is no one there to validate it. My memories of that summer play like an indie movie. A romantic and slightly gritty character study about two misfits who find their match in each other. Idealised, and rose tinted too. Every memory has a warm, grainy, golden hour tone. Memories include:
Sneaking into the Odeon when staff weren’t looking away from the ticket desk, and watching two films back to back.
Lying in the grass on Richmond Green with cans of G&T, sharing Marlboro Reds. She lay her head in my lap and I ran my hands through her long brown hair, whilst she read a David Lynch book.
Watching her apply lip gloss, standing on her tiptoes to access a high mirror. The dimples of cellulite across the back of her thighs, under the gentle curve where her bum met her legs.
The feeling of warmth from her body next to mine as we drifted off to sleep.
Ballroom dancing around to a Blur song in a pub, drinks in hand, giddy and giggling.
In my first year of university, I met my soulmate, Miranda. From the moment we met, we decided we were more than just friends - we were sisters. We connected over so many things: growing up in Essex, a shared love of 80s and 90s teen movies, and a tenuous grip on our mental health.
I spent my first summer break at her house, escaping the alienation of my hometown. She rented a tiny studio in Richmond. It wasn’t much more than a small room with a microwave, but it somehow cost over a grand a month. Not many people I knew had places of their own, so despite the peeling paint and mildewed ceilings, it seemed so grown up and glamorous.
Like all summer romances, the heady excitement came to an end. September came and we were due back at university. Back on campus, things were different. She got a new boyfriend who I didn’t really know. We grew a bit distant. She seemed stressed.
Just before we were due to break up for Christmas, she went missing. It feels strange to gloss over the six weeks of hell that followed, but I could also write a whole book on that period. In the last week of December, I got the call to let me know her body had been found.
I have really struggled to know what to write after that sentence. There are no words that can sum up the black hole the loss of Miranda left in my life. Grief became so integral to who I was and how I navigated the world.
Grieving a friend or chosen family member is often not recognised with the same weight that death of a biological or family member or life partner. In the month or so after Miranda’s death, a well-meaning relative told me that I just had to ‘get over it,’ like he’d had to get over the death of his parents, both of whom died in their nineties. Just weeks after Miranda passed, a friend suggested we watch one of his favourite movies, Brick Lane. A film in which a character dies by suicide, in the same very specific way Miranda died. When I contacted the university telling them I wasn’t coping and wanted to take a year out, they told me it wasn’t an option and directed me to the university counselling service, which, unsurprisingly, wasn’t particularly useful.
No one seemed to understand how all encompassing my grief was. Miranda and I largely hadn’t had the same social circles, and any mutual friends we did have didn’t have the depth of relationship that we’d had together. I had no one to grieve for her with. Most people who knew me knew that I’d lost a friend. What they didn’t know is that I had lost a sister, someone I loved desperately, who I thought of very much as a life partner of sorts.
After the initial shock and first wave of grief had worn off, I would often lose myself deep in thought, wondering what our relationship meant and how it might have changed. Years after her death, I would wonder if we would still be friends had she not died. I questioned if she would still like me, or if I would like her. I found myself asking how well I actually knew her, our friendship having spanned less than a year.
These questions hurt because of how significant my grief was. I spent hours, months, years wrapped up in grieving. I was wholly dedicated to it. Beyond hours of processing or dwelling on it, I threw myself into memorialising her in various ways. On her birthday, I made an annual pilgrimage to her grave. I had a big collage of photos of us together on my wall. I got a tattoo with her initials. I got a tree planted in her name. I kept all the things I had from things we did together in a shoebox with her photo on the front.
This dedication to grief and her memory clashed heavily with the questions that plagued my mind. It made me feel embarrassed, like a fraud. Here I was, memorialising someone that might not even like me now. Did I exaggerate the importance of our relationship after her death? Had I idealised her to the point where I was mourning an ideal rather than a real person?
I questioned it a lot, what our relationship had meant. I was early on in exploring my sexuality and had come out as bisexual to a few people. In the first few months after she died, I found myself wishing I’d told her I loved her. I got wrapped up in the idea that if we had been lovers, I could have saved her.
I thought about what I’d do if I could have another few moments with her alive. Whenever I thought of this, I just thought of kissing her. Desperately, all over her body. I thought about her body a lot. I wanted to remember every inch of it. Her smell, the hair on her arms, the feeling of her bones. I was desperate to remember every inch of her, terrified that the memory would fade.
I started to wonder if I was in love with her. I loved her, yes, but did I want to be with her? That night that we’d messed around under the covers, had it been nerves and internalised homophobia holding me back?
It’s been 16 years since her death and I’ve come a long way since those initial few years. It took me a long while to work past all the troubling questions and to a happier place where I’ve realised I’ll never really have the answers - and that’s okay. What our relationship meant at the time or what it might have meant in the alternate reality in which she didn’t kill herself, none of it really matters. What matters is that the relationship meant a great deal to me, and that I celebrate and honour what we had. I could have gone through life not feeling that spark, never feeling like I’d met ‘the one’. Instead I got lucky. I found my person, and we had one glorious summer together. What a privilege it is to have experienced that.
I still make that annual trip to her grave in Shoeburyness. It’s a seaside town, not too dissimilar from my own hometown. Because of this, and because of her, it feels like home. She was born on Valentine's Day, so I buy a dozen roses to leave at her grave. After visiting her, I get a tray of chips, visit the arcades, sit on the concrete beach wall and watch the sea. I imagine what we might be doing together, today:
Meeting in London, after too many weeks of not seeing each other, work and life getting in the way. Throwing our arms around each other as soon as we meet, linking arms and gossiping as we leave the station to head to a bar.
Falling out over something silly, and not speaking for a few weeks. Feeling that frustration that's reserved for only your closest friends and family. Glancing impatiently at my phone waiting to see if she’s got in touch. Eventually caving in, and texting her first.
Visiting a swimming pool for her first swimming lesson, making up for her childhood in which she never learned. Holding her hand as she descends down the steps, goose pimples on her arms, a nervous smile on her face.
The grin on her face as she holds my baby for the first time. Her eyes shining with tears, pride and love, as she gently strokes his hair and cheeks, and tells me ‘he’s so lovely, and he’s all yours.’
Waking up to my phone buzzing in the early hours of the morning, seeing her name. I’ll ask her if she’s okay, she’ll say, not really. I’ll fumble to turn the bedside light on and say ‘I’m here, I love you. What’s happened? No, no, don’t worry, I was already awake. Let’s talk.’
Sophie Yates Lu is an organiser, creative facilitator and massage therapist based in East Kent, currently figuring out new parenthood. Sophie works with survivors, sex workers, communities of colour and other communities battling injustice.