A friend is for a reason, a season, or a lifetime

Picture by Mark Allison

           It’s a little over six months since I started this blog to try and draw my technophobic friend into my world and perhaps a little patronisingly (it’s true I was being patronising) drag her into the 21^st century.  My pompous attempt at refreshing our long, long friendship over the internet might have on one brief moment succeeded, but since then there has been a lengthy reverberating silence.

It’s a little over six days since the same friend’s birthday, and every year I forget! Well not exactly forget, I always remember the next day and palm slap my forehead. I’m not sure why I do that, because we’re long past the stage of sending cards or presents. It’s just that I know her birth date so well, it is ingrained on my mind like my childhood telephone number (485464), it’s one of those numbers that will always, always be part of my memories.

It’s a little over six hours since Mr Sunshine woke with the dawn and set off with five students for a gaming competition in Cambridge and I lay unable to go back to sleep,  pondering friendship  - I’ve been pondering ever since.

A good friend once told me that people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. I remember feeling offended at the time assuming (making an ass of myself again) she meant I was only to be a friend for a season or maybe a reason, when I wanted to be a friend for a lifetime. There was no need to be offended, I know now our friendship was for a reason. We no longer communicate as we once did, but yesterday she sent me an email – she said she missed my smiling face - I miss her too.

Picture also by Mark Allison

I think I must have been very good in a past life, because I had some amazing friends over the years, better than I deserve actually! Just because I don’t see those friends anymore, doesn’t mean I don’t think about them – I do.  Sometimes I wish I could turn the clock back and tell them how much having them in my life meant to me, because for some it’s already too late.

But for my technophobic friend it’s not too late. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t read the blogs; they are evolving and developing a life of their own. Just as we have done as friends, we’ve moved on, found new lives and new friendships. We no longer need to share every thought or dream, we already did that as twelve year olds making daisy chains on the lawn.  What we have is time, as her dad used to to say: ‘Everything in life is daft, except time – time is the only thing you can’t replace’,  well time is what we need, time to grow up, to mature and make the best of the life we’ve been given. But there is one thing for sure, when we’ve finished maturing, when responsibility and achievement no longer clammer to be heard – I’m going to find her. 

We are going to sit in her kitchen, wine in our teacups. She’ll still be slimmer than me, her hair will still be long and she’ll know my real age. She’ll remind me of the time I wrote pan-iced instead of panicked on an insurance claim. She’ll wear a flowered apron because she knows I like them and we’ll giggle and laugh until tears run down our cheeks, she’ll do her Monty Python impression of the ‘Knights who say Ni’, and we’ll talk about people no one but us remembers.

Happy Birthday my friend, sorry it’s late................