Friendship

It is so incredibly easy to lose contact with friends. When either you or they move away, you pledge you will keep your friendship alive and vibrant. Then, over the months and years, things change and you lose contact.

This was brought home to me today when I had an email message from a person who was one of my dearest and closest friends. We went through so much together. We had a deep closeness, despite our age difference. We were really like sisters.

Our friendship was attacked and managed to survive. We had people come into our lives who tried, and did succeed, to break up our friendship. It was a truly unfortunate situation because it involved our teaching careers as well. In the end, I guess it really did succeed in closing out closeness.

It was a very stressful time, and we ended up parting campuses first, then she finally moved away from the area. We would correspond for a while, and then that became more and more infrequent. The email I got from her was nothing of a personal nature. It was one of those warm, fuzzy chain thingies that you send to a certain number of people assuring you good luck.

It made me think of my best friend now. Our friendship is crumbling. The horrid truth of the matter is that we are letting it. She only lives four blocks away, and yet we are letting go of communication. We, again, were co-workers. But we began to see how our lives paralleled one another so much. Her son and my daughter were best friends in high school. When I retired, she also quit teaching. She went into IT work, and her hours are long and hard now.

We emailed a lot at first. Emailing is easier than talking on the phone because of her schedule. Now that has dwindled. I wonder how she will react to the warm, fuzzy chain thingie?