I (30 M) never attended my high school friend's funeral. 9 years later it's still on my mind. How do I appropriately seek closure?

Hello.

I had a childhood best friend for a few years in high school. During senior year, we drifted apart as he started to hang out with different crowds that didn't mesh with me. I hated my senior year and had a longing desire to get out of the suburbs and into a place where I could be well accepted for who I was. I moved away and valued that college had introduced a better life for me and him and I lost naturally lost contact. Two years later, he had passed away due to a drug OD.

His funeral was set place a day before my final exams and I chose not to opt-in for extraneous circumstances, despite being about an 1h30m drive away. At the time, I mourned personally with a couple close mutual friends, and reached out to his mom to say my words. Deep down, there was a part of me that didn't feel compelled to go because of how our childhood friendship dissolved and how far our lives have changed.

At that stage in my life (19 yrs old), I wasn't well equipped with etiquette on mourning/grieving (if that's even a thing). It's not that I wasn't sad. I just didn't know what the loss of a human life meant. So the actions I took might've seemed inappropriate given who I was to my friend in the earlier years.

As each year passed, I told myself that I would go visit his place of rest, but never drove myself to actually do it. Eventually it became an afterthought. Several years later, one of his close friends bumped into me while drunk, whom I haven't seen in years, and started calling me out for being a bad person for not showing up to the funeral. If he was aware of my lack of presence, so did many others. I was ashamed and those words had stuck with me since.

Yesterday marked the 9th year since his passing and I'm still thinking about how to muster the courage to reach out to his mom to ask if I could visit his grave (edit: i don’t know where it is so i have to ask). I can't help but continue to feel sorry about the whole situation. I'm having a difficult time knowing how to frame my words to her, or if it's even appropriate to for someone like to me to even ask for this. It's been so long and I still feel disappointed in myself that I had to wait this long to be able to reach out.

Hoping some of you will be able to lend an assist on this for me. It's much appreciated. Thank you.

tl;dr - childhood friend passed away and I didn't attend his funeral because I didn't have proper etiquette at the time + our friendship left on a sour note. looking to seek closure by asking his mom if I could visit his grave but unsure if it's appropriate.

Submitted November 28, 2020 at 04:44PM by electifyingbeats https://ift.tt/3q8bJ0J