Off Point

My mother once said the one thing she did better than anything else was be a friend. It was definitely one of her strengths. She carefully tended to relationships from all over the country, some of them for over 60 years. Her friends filled her radar screen with little loving blips.

It was here that I learned to recognize the rhythm of an enduring friendship and what makes it able to withstand the challenges of life. I could almost feel the precise moment when my own friendships moved from exceptional to enduring and I also came to know friendships that were adaptable and strong in spite of ourselves, or maybe because of it.

It is complicated to maintain relationships like this. You need to trust your intuition when it becomes necessary to step into the green room and watch for a cue to re-enter because there are always places you can't go together. There is great peace knowing you will pick up where we left off on the other side and you  do without exception. 

My mother appreciated all her friends but she was most proud of the oldest ones who had hung in there through everything life tossed out. It wasn't often that one of these friends dropped off her radar, but it happened occasionally. Somehow an irreparable tear formed in a place it could not be patched and the relationship was lost. 

The devastating loss preyed on my mother's conscience and heart. She tried interventions, kind gestures and apologies, but this thing she never fully understood prevailed in the end.  From the outside, it seemed impossible for anything to compromise such a strong friendship enough that either friend would be willing for it to get to a crossroads with nothing left but hollow stories of the past. And yet it had.

My mother spent the last years deeply missing her friends and wondering if she took too much for granted, said something hurtful, was not thoughtful enough. She never knew. Standing where I do now, maybe a gentle erosion was more to blame, so gradual that the friends land on different shores before noticing the direction of the tides. It was too high a price to pay and a painful lesson that not all friends step back to give each other room: sometimes they step back because it is closer to the door.

Loving someone does not make them yours for keeps. It must be agonizing when one friend realizes they are on a one-way path and after so many years of deep communication be unable to muster the courage to tell the other what needs to be said, that they have grown tired and dispassionate about them and want to be on their way.

Whatever precipitated the split, my mother was right to grieve the loss. It is indeed a sad and terrible day.