I’m pretty sure I first heard it from Brene Brown. You need a few trusted friends in your life, she said, who would help you move the body. That you could call and be like, I have a situation, and they’d be like, no need for explanation, where should we dig the hole?
A Dead Body Friend.
At the top of the queue, with her gloves and shovel, is my Kathy. She may be in Wales, and I may be in New Zealand, but Kathy is the most excellent of Dead Body Friends.
I know I could (and do) call her, at any part of the day or night, with my rampaging palette of a hormonal profile, with itchy skin and The Insomnias, my complaints about the weather, and oh my god why isn’t it summer yet, and oh my god it’s already daylight savings and summer has never been, and my neuroses about any number of things that might spring up on a given day, and my queries about life generally and whether I am fundamentally suited to adult hood and what the hell, and oh my god, did you just see the news and what even is that?!
And we will giggle snort and laugh and make a series of inappropriate jokes that are actually really funny as one’s own jokes usually are and make the very serious promises to delete each other’s WhatsApp on death, as well as highly particular ‘safe words’ to whisper in each other’s ear should one of us pass over, and Christ On A Bike, is that the time, I better go to sleep.
Dead Body Friends. Where would we be without them?
After a day of feeling scungy and a significant lack of sleep, I’m feeling especially grateful for our body moving loved ones wot take us as we are and don’t ask questions. Which makes today’s happiness very obvious: It is of course, my most cherished Dead Body Friends.
xx Jane