Old Friends

I talked to old friends last night. He and she are thousands of miles from touching and hugging, but they are there, close, and comforting.

"Old friends," what the heck does that mean anyway? When you are "old" friends you laugh with tears and cry with laughter. You care, you worry, you try to hide your concern for the illnesses and failures you've shared, but you can't. You bury your laughs and your tears with the passage of time and rejoice that you know the word "friend" is just as powerful as the word, "family."

Our friends are concerned for the experience my wife and I are going through with my wife's terminal cancer in the final stages.

A long while back another friend Gail Levine wrote about her observations of the friendship I referred to at the top of this post. I like what Gail said and know it is a truth.

"Friendships travel and weather. They suffer and survive. They change and transfer. All things said get forgiven and forgotten and remembered, but have withstood the task of understanding.

Friendships have moments of old laughter where the walls smile long after conversation has left the room.

Friendships taste each other’s tears and fears.

The rarest of friends have all the goods on each other and know all the good in each other. Maybe they even know the bad, but long ago they ceased to notice."