Being There
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/24/opinion/friendship-loneliness.html
("Being There")
Yesterday, we went to our friend's house for dinner. There was nothing remarkable in this. And that is just the point.
Next year will mark six decades since my friend and I first met as seventh graders. I do not recall those earliest details, nor when we decided we were the best of friends. Maybe it was during those summers out at his parent's house by the beach. In fact, I'm pretty sure that was when our lives became forever intertwined.
We have never wavered since. Even as he spent those years abroad during his medical studies. Distance did not mean distant. Our easy camaraderie remained wholly intact.
And through the vacillations in each of our lives, the forces that tug and pull at us, there was always the simple fact of our enduring relationship. We didn't have to work on it. It merely existed.
A number of years ago he began developing troubling signs. What turned out to be the first shock waves of dementia. It was months before the reality became self evident. But now, and for some significant time, it has been the new abnormal.
At first, I was calling him every other day, making the smallest of small talk, trying to keep him fully engaged. But that has diminished in direct proportion to the exacerbation of his symptoms. The calls are now less frequent. Now made to his wife, while he listens in and sometimes interjects a comment or two, still sprinkled with hints of the humor that remains.
My wife and I try to visit with him at least every other week. My friend and I mostly sit in his den, watching TV, or, on nicer days on the deck outside the kitchen. Often we stay for meals. His communication, and his appetite both markedly different. But I like to think the friendship is remarkably unchanged.
Being there is, to me, what friendship is all about. Not in the easy times, but in the hard ones. Not lying on the beach and playing in the waves, but sitting on the couch and talking just so the sound of my voice can be heard by him.
Friendships are quite remarkable when they endure. And when they can survive hard moments they can be even more than that.
"Just be there" my sole instruction, my mantra, to myself, as I hope and believe it would forever be for him as well.