True Friends

I have another birthday quickly approaching. Time to reflect once again. This past year has been a tough one for me. Always the optimist, I am sure this next go around will be a vast improvement. This last birthday-to-birthday cycle has taught me much about how unprepared we can be for what life has planned for us. Friendship, I feel, is one of our most prized possessions, friendship and a sense of humor. I suppose that’s why I still have good friends going all the way back to my childhood. I love my good friends. I mean I really love them. They have provided me with a sense of direction and comfort through my life. I try, whenever possible, to be a good friend too. Sometimes I can’t be there when I feel I should. But it makes me feel special to be able to help out my friends. All that being said, this past year I have lost two of my very closest friends, one to a strange case of pneumonia and the other to suicide.

Bill was always a little odd on the surface. He was born just days before me. His mother told me that we were in the nursery together in the hospital. That’s how long I’ve known him. We were always on separate paths through life. I partied, he studied. I got in trouble, he bailed me out. He was shy with girls, I would hook him up. He was not a very good golfer, I took his money. We went to separate colleges that were only about 70 miles apart. So we often visited each other on weekends. He learned all about frat parties at Ball State and I learned all about architecture at Miami of Ohio. We also enjoyed road trips together. The San Antonio Worlds Fair, surfing in Galveston, and getting to drink at 18 in New Orleans are great memories for me. We both left home on the same day. I settled in Atlanta and Bill went on to Miami as a full-fledged architect. Through the next 30 years or so, we probably kept in touch at least every couple of weeks. Nothing like getting a quick call from a friend who cares enough to make sure I’m OK. He was my best man at my wedding and I took full advantage of his Miami residency by hanging out in South Beach as my vacation spot of choice.

So when I found out he was sick, it was nearly impossible to believe. Bill did not have an ounce of fat on him and he swam in his high-rise condo pool every morning for years. I went to spend New Years with him just after Christmas 2010. He was very sick. He had damaged his lungs beyond repair and I knew after I left that I had said my last goodbye. He lived through last year’s birthdays and died in early November. I had lost my childhood friend, the kid that knew more about me than anyone else in the world. I wasn’t prepared for the loss.

Jerry was a guy that I met in the early 1990’s. We immediately became good friends and even business partners. Unlike Bill and myself, Jerry and I both did a lot of partying. Of course we were older so it’s called socializing. We buddied up with a large singles set in Atlanta and created many other life-long friends through the 90’s. We continued to keep in touch after I moved to a town in Central Georgia and when I made an abrupt decision to move back to Atlanta, Jerry was there to help and advise. We became each other’s go-to person that we both relied on to call and talk, bitch, or laugh with. Then he up and shot himself.

So why did I feel the need to share these stories? Guess one reason is that I didn’t want to spend my “Total Recall” week alone. But, maybe you can take something out of these words that will remind you to call your oldest, best friend just to say hi. Let them know you are just checking up to make sure they are OK. Wish them a happy holiday season and let them know that you love them and appreciate all that they have meant to you through your life. If you do that, then my loss of Bill and Jerry, melancholy as it is, might have helped us all to understand a little better the real meaning of true friends.