Friends...Gone

Friends...Gone

    The other night we had a friend over for dinner, a chance to catch up with both her life and also with a life my wife and I had left nearly three years ago, that of work.  When such a period of time passes, the changes seem greater for some reason.  Cute little cousins have blossomed into almost unrecognizable young ladies, or hair has gone gray on aunts and uncles (or their children, in our case).  But often with friends, especially close friends, appearances don't really seem to change.  Certainly, physical appearances change, but within a short amount of time, all such images become irrelevant and your old times are back...it's almost as if time had stayed still and despite the years, you are right back where you left off, laughing and joking and well, being old friends.

    It all reminded me of the song by Paul Simon, Old Friends. A portion of his lyrics went: Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly?  How terribly strange to be seventy.  Long ago, I remember hearing that song as college beckoned.  As with other songs with distant ages (for example, the Beatles When I'm Sixty-Four), reaching those points and ages in life seemed an eternity away.  And now, sitting on a park bench with a high school friend or two, it would indeed be strange to be looking back, to be seventy (no, I'm not there yet but it is increasingly in sight): Memory brushes the same years...Silently sharing the same fear.

    Anyway, back to our friend at dinner.  All was going well, the catching up and the small bit of grumbling and such about work, and then she asked if we knew that a co-worker had died.  How long ago, we asked?  About ten days ago.  For some reason, this clobbered us...and later puzzled us.  As with many people at work, you know them but you don't really "know" them.  Even after nearly 30 years of bumping into this person, and gabbing with him, and hearing his tall tales and stories, and realizing that he was a bit younger than you, you are shocked.  For some reason, you're not ready to hear this.  A co-worker yes, a friend, yes.  But not someone you've gone to dinner with or visited at his house or knew his family, or met at an outing.  But still...you "knew" him fairly well.

    Somehow, the news would be a bit easier (if it is ever easier) if the person worked in a dangerous profession...a soldier, a police officer, an electrical lineman, a stunt driver.  Sometimes an elderly person's death becomes acceptable, they had a good life, we say.  But when it's someone younger, or something unexpected (such as a car accident), we react with disbelief.  And this is what we did when we heard about our friend.  How could this have happened?

    Perhaps as we grow older such unexpected news is simply the norm.  We are certainly discovering that as two other friends, one in her 40s and one in his 70s, had strokes.  Both lost their speech (but both are slowly --ever so slowly-- getting it back), both were physically active (he ran five miles daily) and both had no real family history of heart trouble.  Another friend (another co-worker) recently had to be revived by paramedics when he collapsed in his home (an overworker, he took two months to recover and jumped right back into a busy work schedule).

    I had written a bit about this in an earlier post, but this particular co-worker's death brought a heavier hand than either my wife or I expected.  Perhaps we did know him a bit more than we thought, or cared for him a bit more than we thought.  Either way, his was one of those faces that when seen again in a photo, would easily fill our heads with images and memories, with laughter and with good thoughts.  And we all have those, from aunts to parents to animals...each passing and moving on to another place we cannot imagine (even if it's a void), gone from our lives and living only in our memories.  As Paul Simon ended his song: Time it was, and what a time it was...a time of innocence, a time of confidences.  Long ago, it would be long ago, preserve your memories...they're all that's left you.

    To my friend and co-worker, farewell.  Sorry that I missed you...but you will be remembered.