It is written that if you can count good friends on one hand, you are rich.  I was right to count myself as a very rich lady.  All have already transited, and another one or two still far younger than I, will follow long after me.

I want to write what is a good friend to me.  What I had in a friendship with Jan.  I met her at a crucial time of my life and we meshed upon meeting.  The following is from a journal entry edited for space.

I was then about to enter my fiftieth year.  This will tell my young readers that we do not appear full feathered just because we age.   It is a process and encompasses commitments  made even while the inner house churns about.

Less than three years after we met, my world fell apart.  And putting it back together was difficult.  One
never thinks about losing one’s ability to trust one’s Self, but simply stated,  it is a hard road back.

St. Paul and those who had their road to Damascus experience could take a year off and have their groupies care for them.   The times now have us blessed if we have a friend.

‘She has given me so much over the years.  She has pointed out how good and unique I am and has helped build my self esteem bit by bit.   From the first she had an open ear to what was said as well as unsaid.  She pointed a possible direction but never once said I was making a wrong decision. 

She understood from where I was coming.  And rejoices where I am today.  Everything teaches she says.  You are where you are today and go on from there.  She teaches.  You do not spend energy on regrets, but learn from them.  And she praises.

My parenting the boys she said had her and her friends wanting to throw in the towel.  They actually talked to me she said.  And we knew you thought we all were like you.’ 

We were best friends for over 3 decades.  It is now 25 years that she is gone from Earth.  It took a long time for me to stop reaching for the phone to call Jan.  Laughingly when there was static on the line, we said that obviously there was cosmic monitoring.

We matched minds on many issues and ‘all time is simultaneous’ we accepted.  She often said that what we learn is more a matter of remembering for those like us.  I am grateful she was in my life.  She was a good teacher.

From a line in another poem, I will say,  ‘ces’t moi, it is I,  pull me over.’

We Break Bread. . .

I have broken bread with old friends
for what seems to be many centuries.

We continue our conversations
begun when yet we were in other times
and were other people.

But it has been, you see, only a minute.
We bring to mind all things old and
some things new.

It was but a quirk of Nature, so that our hearts
would grow and become one heart.
It all has a familiar fit.  Don’t you think?

All things will be new again
when we break bread in the next of times.
But you knew that, didn’t you?

All things new are really all things old.
Even some of us.

 

photo by John Holmes