I’ve been thinking about friendship a little recently. I heard a story of a fraternity brothers that had known each other now for four decades. Last month, one of the brothers was taken early by a quick and painful fight with cancer. The other 4 brothers crew in and across oceans and continents to be there for the death of a man they might also an entirely lifetime ago.
After he died, the brothers - all wildly successful in their own domains - took an additional week out of their lives to close the estate, clear his home and ensure that his surviving kids would be taken care of.
In contrast, our primary couple friends here in Montreal have been notably pulling away from us for some weeks. It’s been a slow retreat in my mind, but something clicked in N’s head last night. She is becoming hardened to this now after many years in academia where it is the normal for friends to move around the planet every few years to chase the next position. But I could tell that this realization still stung.
For me, the surprise was lessened as my read on the person was as a social butterfly. Connected to many, but dances in the wind, never settling in only a breath of wind.
Recently, plans have never been cemented. Questions of future plans are always met with cagey and deflective responses.
Enough. I’m too old and intolerant for people that cannot be straightforward. I know what I am. I am comfortable in who I am.
I have known for many years, I have a small number of people that I could call on. Proper relationships. The sort you can pick up after a few years and pick up a conversation as if it were last weekend.
My regret is that, of these 5 or so people that I would help die, they are all so far away. What of the friend that’s just there for a weekly beer?
Maybe I need to fix that.