I sit here at the home of my old friend, for the sake of convenience I'll call him Brian, alone again as he has gone to bed after an exhausing day with his family. They spent the day apparently wandering about some nature preserve nearby while I sat here attempting to entertain myself with his vast array of electronic gadgets. I could have tagged along as he had sked me too, but I would have felt much like an intruder upon his family outing.
I'm not particularly comfortable in this place. It may simply be beccuse it has been some time since I have spent significant time away from home and even longer since I have spent any real time with Brian. The last time I saw him I was passing through and stopped by for an evening of small talk and reminiscence. As always, at the end of the evening we both promised to keep in touch, both knowing full well that our lives had grown far too distant both geographically and personnally to ever keep that promise. That was some 21 years ago.
That is why I was both surprised by his invitation to spend a week or two with him and reluctant to accept. I don't know him anymore, nor he me. Our interests have changed a great deal since those days in the early seventies when we became close, nearly inseparable friends. I wonder now just what it was that drew us together in the first place. Upon reflection, we were entirely different men even then, he being an idealist and me trying to work my way up the corporate ladder.
My marriage nearly spelled the end of our friendship, as I busied myself with family things and he continued to pursue his dreams. We would get together fairly often at first, but as time passed we grew quite distant and eventually he moved on with his life, married and settled in to what he believed his dream job.
Over the years, my career became less and less important to me and family became central in my mind. I left the corporate world with a sigh of relief and started my own business where I could set my own hours and work primarily with my hands rather than sit at a desk piled high with tedious tasks that failed to capture my imagination.
Brian at the same time was becoming more and more goal oriented, moving quickly up the ranks in his public sector career until he became so entrenched in the system that he could not envision anything outside his career. He spent increasingly long hours on the job and fewer with his family, As a result his home life suffered until his wife, also a public sector employee, informed him that either he re-evaluate his prioities and spend more time at home or she'd leave. The last several years of his marriage were filled with great turmoil and anger. They stayed together, but neither was happy. When a few months ago his wife passed after a short but painful fight with cancer he found himself alone. His children all had left home some years ago, married and started families of their own. He has spend a great deal of time since his wife's passing rebuilding relationships with his children and grandchildren.
Now he is reaching deep into his past and trying to rebuild a relationship destined to failure. I am not interested in reliving the old days no matter how pleasant they may have been. The are gone. At the same time I can sympathise with his desire to reconnect. When I stopped by 21 years ago, that was very much my goal. I realised then however that there would be no going back. It took only a few brief hours of conversation for me to know that those two young men, joined at the hip in their youth, are no more.
Now, having accepted his invitation, I am captive to his attempts to rekindle that old fire of deep friendship long since gone cold. I don't drive and am not of the sort to just leave without at least putting forth the effort. Oh, yes there is a part of me that would like to regain some of that which has been lost. I am however a little more realistic in my old age.
I do hope that we can enjoy this short time and then move on with our separate and distant lives knowing that we made the effort.
