Loss

My oldest friend was living in Spain when the pandemic struck. He was godparent to my kids and we had all always been very close, even though for years he had lived on the other side of the world.

He had been going through years of difficulties and was finally coming out the other end: he had a teaching job that he was enjoying, and he was planning to buy a small piece of land in a rural area — which is very cheap where he was — and to develop an agriculturally self-sufficient way of life.

We had had various difficulties in our own friendship over time, but had always been incredibly close, and these had begun to heal. In the summer of 2020, I was planning to visit him with my family, and then we were going to continue on together for 2 weeks to Ghana, where I was doing some work.

When the lockdown struck, he had entered into a brief relationship with the woman who was also a tenant in the 3-bedroom flat in which he was renting a room. The incredibly harsh lockdown in Spain rapidly caused immense psychological problems: I spoke to him every day, and I could hear his mood deteriorating back into how he had been before. The woman wanted to continue the relationship but he did not want to, and yet he could not go out. Thrust into an intolerable situation, at one point he left the flat in the middle of the night to go and sleep in some bushes; once the lockdown lifted a little in Spain, he took to sleeping in hire cars.

He came back to visit the UK as soon as it was practical. He spent 2 weeks with his brother, and then came to spend 2 weeks with us. But psychologically, he was not the same — depressed, moody, stuck to his phone. And angry.

Over the next year, it became clear that he was angry with me. At one of the most desperate points of the lockdown, he had rung up just desperate and saying he thought he had found a flight which would be leaving and he wanted to come to stay. At that  time, the coercive and authroitarian atmosphere in the UK — and talk of neighbours snitching on each other for breaking rules — was such that I suggested he just wait a few weeks till things were clearer. 

He thought I had not been there when he needed me. I thought that I was calling him every day, and the fascist turn was such that it was not possible.

Now, 3 years later, we do not communicate. He has gone to live on the other side of the world.

A lifelong friendship broken by lockdown.