Miranda Hart: "My friend's death showed me what it means to live"

The phone call came at 9.30am, one day in April 2016, and it’s still etched in my mind. I left the photoshoot and found a quiet spot to hear the news I was dreading: my dear friend Bella had died. As I heard the words, tears flooded my eyes and the breath was whipped from my throat. But I had to return to the shoot for my new book – which had seemed so important just minutes before – and put my grief on hold.

That’s one of the hardest things about my job – carrying on through tough times; doing stand-up comedy when I least feel like laughing; signing autographs with a smile when no one knows what’s going on behind the mask. Later, I left the studio feeling completely numb, in a daze. The next morning, I sat in my bedroom and sobbed for hours.

I’d met Bella, whose real name was Joanna Dugdale, at drama school 20 years ago, where we’d bonded over a warm-up exercise using Italian words, and her nickname stuck. We shared the same ‘silly gene’, and her laugh was infectious. We were both dreamers – “I can sense that sweet smell of success for you, I really can – keep going,” she used to say to me.

Then, in 2013, Bella’s health plummeted, and she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was stoic in her battle through chemotherapy and was given the all clear a couple of years later.But when I saw her in March last year, I couldn’t help but notice her slightly hollow face, her almost translucent skin – like she was fading away. She admitted to feeling unwell, but brushed it off as a side effect from a course of antibiotics.

We were on a girls’ weekend in a country cottage in Sussex, wrapping ourselves in cosy blankets and drinking endless cups of tea. We joked about resembling two old, bonkers women from a sketch I’d written years earlier that Bella had appeared in. “Look at us, we’ve become Mave and Joan!” she giggled. Again, her laugh filling the room. But I had no idea that would be the last time I’d ever hear it in person.

Two days later, she was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, and within just a couple of weeks, she was slipping in and out of consciousness as she spoke to me on the hospice phone. I told her, “I keep thinking about our Mave and Joan weekend,” and she laughed. Then I said, “I love you,” and she replied, “I love you, too.” It was all I needed to say.

Her death blindsided me – the grief was heavy and unrelenting over the following months, and I missed her dearly. But losing Bella, who was just 42 – around the same age as me – when she died, also had an extraordinary and unexpected impact. Not only did it inspire the story of true friendship in my new book The Girl With The Lost Smile, it made me realise that life doesn’t stop for our bereavement – everything just carries on.

Despite Bella saying she had the ‘sweet smell of success’ for me, she was the one who finally helped me understand a phrase I had once read, but couldn’t get my head around: ‘Our death is our greatest gift’. It’s painful to lose anyone we love, but how we hold on to their memory shows us what’s truly important: how kind they were, how they made us laugh, how they held our hand. And that’s what I remember so clearly about Bella.

Those achievements so many of us strive for – buying a house, bagging that job promotion – are memorable, but they have no ‘sweet smell’. That’s why I will continue to have fun every day, try and make people laugh and spread kindness where I can - because that’s what it means to live.

The Girl With The Lost Smile (Hodder Children’s Books, £12.99) by Miranda Hart is out now

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