14 Oct A New Flavor of Grief

By Jennifer Davis Dodd

One of my best friends died suddenly on May 14, 2021. I was in an after-hours work meeting when my husband tried to call me. I declined the call and texted “in mtg.” He texted back: “911.”

When I called him, sitting in a restaurant booth across from a colleague, he choked out, “Come home. Erin called. Eric is gone.”

I drove about 30 miles home on autopilot. I can’t tell you a thing about the (rush hour) traffic—except that a red Corvette was right alongside me, on my passenger side, the entire trip.

Eric had a red Corvette when my husband and I met him.

Erin, his then-girlfriend and soon-to-be-fiancée, was my colleague-and-already-very-good-friend when she introduced us almost 20 years ago. She and I had arranged a trial double-date one night to see if “our boys would play nice.”

They did. And Eric became my husband’s best friend.

Brack and I were at their wedding in Vegas. Brack and Eric, born five years and a day apart, celebrated milestone birthdays together. We four traveled together. We maintained the friendship—though contact was sporadic—even after we moved from Texas to Florida and they spent several years in China! Eric would call you out of the blue to chat—and not for a minute but half an hour or so. We weren’t his only friends by any stretch! He always picked up people as he moved through life—but we were part of a wonderful group, all of us circling around Erin and Eric. Many of us considered him our best friend.

I’ve lost both of my parents, but Eric is my first close friend to die. It’s a different flavor of grief.

I miss him—so badly some days—but I also ache for my best friend, his wife, Erin. And I feel fear: “I’d never make it if Brack died.”

And then I look at Erin; well, I watch her, really. We went back to Texas for Eric’s memorial and were blessed to be included at his ash scattering off the Florida coast. I’ve seen her in action—going about living a life without her best friend, lover and partner in crime. (Did I mention Eric’s wicked sense of humor and adventurous streak?) I’ve texted our friends back in Texas for covert updates: “How is she?” I should do a better job of just asking her myself.

Erin navigates her own grief and this new chapter with a grace and strength I admire greatly. She would never have chosen this, but she’s moving through it. So I borrow a bit of her refusal to be stopped when I feel overwhelmed by my grief for him.

She has her moments, of course. And I think sometimes those of us around her cause them; how can she not react when we look at her with tears in our eyes? Or ask to hug her?

But there were jokes the weekend of his ash scattering, too. Eric was even the gentle butt of a few of them. But he could always take it. His laugh was usually the loudest and longest. He loved life—and we loved living it around him.

I’m so grateful to Erin for introducing us to Eric all those years ago—for sharing him with so many of us, who are now grieving her loss and our own.

Our grief is a testament to the kind of guy he was, really. I’m sure it’s different for each of us; he had a different impact on each of us, after all.

But would we give up having known him not to feel it?

Lose the bright flavors of joy, laughter, adventure and belonging that Eric brought to life to avoid the salty taste of tears and fear and loss?

I know I wouldn’t.

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