Friends and Time

I had dinner the other night with my friends Franklin and Tom, with whom I have been friends for over 50 years. Tom was up visiting from Florida with his partner Mike and staying with Franklin while Franklin’s roommate is on his third or fourth trip to Thailand.  Franklin himself divides his time between his condos in Chicago and Florida, and that I actually know people who casually flit off to Thailand and run back and forth between condos never ceases to amaze me.

I met Franklin (he does not like to be called “Frank”, and I’ve actually never heard anyone do so) one weekend while I came up to Chicago from college. I was driving to a party with friends, and we got slightly lost when we saw Franklin standing at a bus stop. We pulled over and asked if he might know where the address was, and he said that is exactly where he was headed. And we have been friends ever since.

When Norm and I moved into our apartment on Wellington (you can find a picture of it on my website, under “Photos”), we met Tom through another tenant of the building, and our little group of friends continued to grow.

We never totally lost track of one another even in the 18 years when I lived in Los Angeles, though we saw each other very seldom.

Franklin met his partner Ray during my first years in Chicago, and they were together for about 20 years. Ray was a great guy…tall, blond, a great sense of humor. He ultimately died after two failed kidney transplants and years of dialysis. He held the dubious distinction of being the longest-surviving patient to live solely on dialysis.

Tom went through not one but three tragic relationships; one died in a car crash, one—another Ray—of a heart attack, a third of cancer. His current partner, Mike, is quite a few years younger than Tom, and we all hope for the best.

Partners named Ray seem to be a common thread between us. And somehow, despite the physical distance that often exists between us, the bonds of friendship.

Exactly what combination of events/circumstance made us friends to begin with is impossible to say, and how we have managed to stay friends after so many years, when so many other friends have come and gone, is impossible to say.

But oddly, friendship has the qualities of both rubber bands and stones: rubber bands in that the strongest stretch the farthest; stones because they help form the very foundation of our lives. For the most part, friendship is immune to the ravages of time, which reflect themselves only in a mirror.

I have well passed the point where some of my friends have been part of my life longer than my own parents. Incomprehensible, but true.

For those of us without children, parents, or siblings, friends take on a special importance in that they fill the gap left by the deaths of those biologically closest to us. Friends become, in effect, family, and as I treasure my remaining biological relatives…down from parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts to cousins…I also treasure my friends, and can’t imagine what I would do without them.

I would sincerely hope that each of you not only has your own network of a few good friends, but appreciate their value to your life.

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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site: www.doriengrey.com.