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On Losing Old Friends
This was written after a quiet day of kayaking shortly after returning home from the funeral of my brother in Philadelphia, in September 2008.
A missionary priest who was visiting our parish recently told a very funny story about our relationships with each other here on earth. To make a point that probably was missed by several in the audience, the priest told of having dinner with an acquaintance of his who happened to be a former Broadway actress. The now elderly actress, during their dinner, said to him: “It’s terrible that when you get old all your friends start dying.” The priest said his mind immediately went into high gear trying to come up with something very sage to say to her (after all he was supposedly a spiritual advisor), but before he could come up with anything, she added: “But on the other hand, so do your enemies.”
I’ve thought of that story more than once while paddling my kayak in the ocean, and can honestly say that I have never taken pleasure in the passing of any so-called enemies of mine (we all have them, you know, and according to Norman Podhoretz: “It’s important to have enemies, because everything depends on the kind of enemies you have”), but I have experienced great pain at the passing of relatives and friends. Two of my best friends (Ed Dade and Jim Kelly) have already been mentioned elsewhere in these writings. There are, of course, others: no fewer than six fellow members of the Bank Robbery Squad in the FBI Washington Filed Office have preceded me, and I pray for them along with two of my former colleagues in the field of Insurance Fraud every day. Less than two weeks ago, we buried my brother Bill, who lost his fairly short battle with brain cancer, and only four months before that we buried his son, Billy, about whom I have already written.
It’s not easy, if even possible, to replace old friends. Older people meeting for the first time have already missed most of the great experiences and good times shared by old friends that make those friendships so special. Those memorable experiences, especially the good ones, shared by friends early in life cannot normally be matched by later-in-life events shared with new acquaintances. There are exceptions, of course, and experiences shared in certain professions (two of which are on my resume) can bring special meaning to relationships of later origin.
So what does one who has lost old and dear friends do? I wish I knew.
(On such things does one ruminate while paddling a one-person kayak miles out in the ocean - closer to God.)
