Friends in Daydreaming on the Porch

“....If you count on other people to be faithful friends, online or in real life, you’re going to be sadly disappointed. Only a precious few stay the course with you. That’s been the case for me....”

From my previous journal entry here

“What could be sweeter than to have a friend with whom, as with yourself, you can discuss all that is in your heart?”

Meister Eckhart
(Quoted in Scott Russell Sander’s Book “The Force of Spirit”

Recently I and the friend I have know the longest in terms of years had dinner out for seafood twice while she was here from northern Virginia on vacation. I have known her since 1973, an amazing amount of time when you think of it. She was teaching school and boarding at the home of my aunt in the fall of that year, and thus I got to know her. She became very attached to my aunt who was like a second mother to her, just as I felt my aunt was to me. I still miss Aunt R___ terribly 11 years after she passed away.

S____ and I have exchanged many letters and emails over the years. I have seen her two children grow up and become adults. Despite all my wanderings, travels, job searching, and setbacks in life, and in spite of the geographical distance, we have managed to keep in touch.

My other oldest and best friend I have known since 1974 when we and several others worked together during a memorably short time on a newspaper. It was about the best time of my life, as I look back on it, because he and his wife became the closest of friends after working on the newspaper. For a number of years thereafter we saw each other constantly, talking late into the night. Everything that mattered in our hearts and souls was vented, explored, talked about. Life had a real purpose, and a major part of that was sharing it with those dear friends. We actually became too dependent on each other, or maybe it was me that leaned too much on them. Regardless, this extreme closeness came to and end for a while during a terrible period in my life but it was restored, although it was never the same again.

I had never had any friends like that, before or since. And that was in the 70s. Although we keep up sporadically, the bond is not nearly as strong, not even close. Philosophically, politically, spiritually there is a wide gulf. We basically avoid talking about certain subject, from the past and in the present. Still we do somehow manage to see each other every few years, mainly when he and his family come down to South Carolina on vacation.

Since the beginning of the year I have tried emailing them more regularly and sending them some of my writing about caregiving. But all I hear months later is that the email got misplaced or he has been so busy he just hasn’t had time to write. What particularly hurt, however, was an email I sent at the beginning of June in which I noted and celebrated the 40th anniversary of our newspaper experience and good times working together those many years ago. I sent them a link related to a place we had gone that year that was very special. I waited and waited and no response. Of all the emails this was the one I was sure I’d hear back about soon and was so expectant of a reply and reaction. Nothing. Three months later an email. They were going to be at one of the beaches on vacation and invited me to spend the day. C____ also apologized for being “terrible correspondents.” For various reasons I could not go see them at the beach this year, but I was not too disappointed because I was so hurt by the lack of response to my emails. The seeming lack of interest. How else can I explain it? I don’t care what excuses are made, I do not believe a steadfast and lasting friend would do that or make those excuses. We are all human. It’s understandable how friends fall through the cracks of life, but it never takes away the sense of loss and hurt. So when they do finally contact me, I feel less joy and excitement, much less.

Finally, the other close friend I had from those heady years of starting out in life in the early to late 70s, lives about two hours from Charleston. I have not seen him and his wife for 20 years and we have not been in any contact. I’ve been vacillating since early this year about calling them and finally arranging to visit. I have many, many memories of good times with R and his and my other friend at the time, E. But what will it be like to reconnect after 20 years? I am nervous and excited. I want to do it and am leaning toward doing so this Fall. I don’t believe they even know how to contact me, but he has a prominent position in another town in South Carolina and I know how to reach him. Like I said, I’m nervous about calling.

In all the years since the 70s I have had good friends at work but never became close friends with any of them except for a few and that didn’t last long as the circumstances of life always seemed to mean I left and moved far away. I have lost contact with all of them.

In the past 20 years on the Internet there have been good friends and many attempts to find friends via Web sites, chat, instant messaging, and online writing communities such as Open Diary. A LOT of reaching out, mostly in futility. But now almost all of that is gone. There are only a couple of those close online friends that I hear from now. Again, lasting friends are precious and few. It saddens me sometimes when I go back and think of all those promising friends online. I even met a few in person or talked on the phone with them. But online is not like in-person and real life friendships, close as it can sometimes approximate that. I feel I learned that lesson the hard way.

I am not blaming these friends who have dropped away. I am as much at fault. I could have always made a greater effort to keep in touch. But it seems that when I do, I am inevitably disappointed. Is it true that “Nothing gold can stay,” as the poet said. Maybe in another life I will be reunited with all those people I felt a special kinship with but never could know fully in this life. I don’t know. It would be nice to have the questions answered, the true meaning and purpose of knowing of all those people revealed, and this earthly lifetime of events and people know and briefly cherished, fully illuminated. I believe all those encounters and brief friends and all that effort to connect had and has a purpose.