Freundschaftkummer
It’s not a real word, but I feel like a mouthy German term — even if I totally made it up — helps me think about things sometimes.
It used to be, a few hundred years ago, that you’d be born, grow up, and die in the same town as everyone you knew. Nobody moved away, your community was set and defined, and when you grieved for someone, it was because they were dead.
Then the Industrial Revolution happened, and now there’s this weird thing that there isn’t a good word for. It’s where you have a friend who you used to be close to, but who has — for one reason or another — become less close. And you feel like they’re gone, and you miss the friendship that you had. But it’s not like you’re allowed to really mourn them, because they’re not dead. Every time you talk to them they’re “great!” and “doing so well!” and “loving it here in Pasadena!” So it doesn’t make sense for you to grieve.
But it does, because you’re not mourning the loss of a friend, but of a friendship — grieving for an unrecoverable moment of community which is just as forever-gone as death.
I’m not thinking of anyone in particular as I write this … I’m not even feeling that melancholy at the moment. But I think we do need a word for this. I could come up with something cute and webby, like “frieving,” or “mournship.” But it’s not cute, and it’s not webby. When you feel it, it blows a hole in you like a cannonball, so I’m going to use a cannonball-sized word.
I’ll call it freundschaftkammer.
2 responses to “Inventing a word for “mourning the loss of a friendship””
Where would we be without cannonball-sized words?
sounds like something Dwight would say.
and I know the feeling of which you speak. it does indeed need a name.