Losing my friend to cancer helped give me a road map for a better life

To say that losing James changed everything is an understatement. It was the first time I realised that life is unpredictable and finite. From then on, everything felt uncertain and wrong. I looked at my life and realised that while I talked about what I wanted, I wasn’t creating that future for myself. For years, I had saved to fund a year of writing and travelling around Australia, but I hadn’t done anything about making it happen.

So I booked a flight and began moving – running through life, really. I chased dreams and flights and interactions as if cramming my time with significant experiences could stem the hurt of losing someone who had meant so much to me.

Then COVID happened, and I was forced to stop and face myself. Namely, the things I was running from. I asked the big, scary questions: Was I happy? Was I taking my life in the direction I wanted it to go? If I kept pushing forward so relentlessly while being so clueless about who I wanted to be, where would I end up?

From these questions, my novel, The Life Experiment, came to life.

Writing it around my crime fiction deadlines, I called it my secret project, but really, the book was a space where I could reflect on the loss that shaped me. Death is something we only face when forced to, speaking in hushed tones as if mentioning death invites it into our life. But life and death go hand in hand.

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At its core, The Life Experiment is about hope and happiness. It asks readers to reflect on their lives and imagine their future. To take their dreams and themselves seriously. To understand that life and death run parallel to each other, and acknowledge that while grief cannot be outrun, where there is great grief, there is great love.

It’s a story about the beauty in small moments. The hug that feels like it could right all that’s wrong in the world. The loved one who remembers the dreams you discarded. And, in the case of my characters, Layla and Angus, the stranger you meet at a coffee shop on the worst of days, whose smile turns your life on its head.

Grief made me learn that life is unavoidable, beautiful, messy and complex. There are so many things I wish I’d said to James. So many times I wish I’d gone to the hospital, even though he’d told me not to come. And there have been so many moments since that I wish I could have shared with him.

While I can’t change the past, I can continue to live by James’ example: choosing kindness always and finding a laugh or a smile, even in the face of hardship.

The Life Experiment (Simon & Schuster) by Jess Kitching is out July 29.

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