I think this is so extremely hard for the following reasons:

1. Everyone else I've know whose died was either older than me and/or long term ill so there was't the same shock element.

2. Jason was a year younger than me (his actual birthday was 364 days after mine) so this is the first time that my entire life has encompassed someone else's.

3. This brings me back to being nearly 40 and feeling the need to seize the day.

4. This brings me to needing to see a professional about D.

5. When I was at university, it was the first time in my life that I was actually happy. I believe I spent the first term at university quite down simply because I wasn't expected to be caring for and being depressed about my mum. It was a huge learning curve to be happy.

6. The friends I formed there were in a way the bedrocks of my future life. The previous bedrock type friend was Sharon who died a few years ago (2003) - but she had muscular dystrophy so I was expecting her life to be shorter.

7. Jason was one of those bedrocks and he's suddenly and completely gone. We'd made contact over the summer and talked briefly on the phone since and it was just the same, just the same friendship.

8. We spent a lot of time together in Manchester Museum working on a project cataloguing the Egyptian collections. We got closer as friends.

9. The whole thing about Facebook is that it means you can suddenly keep in touch with people that you haven't for years - Jason was one of these. He was a prolific twitterer so he was very much there - even if he was so techy I couldn't understand half his posts!

10. He was a genuinely special person whose Christian faith and his ability for deeds to match his words was amazing. His faith alone and his way of interpreting it was inspiring.

Wish it didn't hurt so much. Such a wimp!