Written by January, 2012 – We Were Friends.
Recently a long time friend of mine passed away. I hesitate to say he lost a bought with cancer because he battled, he inspired, he laughed, he smiled, and carried others on his back at times for 9 years, while cancer gathered all its might, trying to take him down. I dare say cancer never took him down, because he won a lot more battles in that time than he lost. And cancer didn’t inspire anyone, but my friend Joe did. I wrote a tribute to him that I have linked here if you care to see it.
As a result of these recent events I have been thrust into a world of memories from 20-30 years ago. I wasn’t looking for any of these memories, nor was I avoiding any of them. These memories are real. Real people. Real feelings wrapped in a distant vision my mind conjures up at the sound of a song or the mention of a name from yesteryear. This has prompted some wonderful conversations and messages with these real people.
One such chat led me to communicate some of my brief thoughts on the subject of friends. I have expanded on that framework here. Keeping in mind that I don’t expose these words or thoughts for any other reason than truthfully unearthing the source of the webs that hang like decorations in my brain. Thoughts and feelings that, for the most part, have been thought and pondered on before. Time and time again. Maybe just being a voice that usually is only heard in any of our deepest times of thought.
We were friends. We are, and always will be, friends. In an instant, my friend is gone. Gone. Then the story is told, we were friends …
We had so many spontaneous moments that were fun and almost unbelievable. So many moments that nobody else could ever care to hear about. Somehow though, those moments are exactly the ones everyone wants to hear, among friends. So many moments that we probably took for granted, for which I now long to hold onto forever. I wish I could live in all those moments again.
Then for those of us, still roaming God’s, not as green as it should be, earth, the internal questions begin. Self reflection. Self doubt. Remembering our friend we know with certainty how awesome they were while they were here. But, the question that haunts the depths of conscious thought to the point that it messes, too, with the subconscious, is how good a friend were we? My guess is that we meant as much to them as they meant to us.
There’s no measurement with friends. No time elapses. No one thing better than another. There is just that relationship that any of us are lucky enough to live. And part of it is just being ourselves, because in that space that’s exactly who we can be. As it should be.
Then back to me. I hadn’t seen or talked to Joe in years but I do feel like 1987 was only a minute away if I ever saw or talked to him again. That’s how it’s supposed to be right? Unconditional. Conditions are for those who care more about the why’s in life, not the wonders in life.
It is the wonders in life that leave us wanting more when the wonder, we could never put a finger on, goes away. Which is also either miraculously coincidental, or more likely God’s plan, as to why we never could nail down the wonder of it all to begin with. Had we pegged it, our human minds would have picked it apart making it into something other than that which it was. So, I would rather stick to the wonders, the wonderment of those special relationships, and just know that we were friends.