Category Archives: 2025 Archive

THE LOSS OF A FRIEND

Posted: Feb 1, 2025

This business of learning to be a human is tough work.  Last week I turned Seventy-One and I am still learning the right and wrong way to be. At my little birthday celebration, a friend of many years decided to say some very upsetting things to me and about me. She had consumed a good amount of alcohol but that just loosened her lips – the thoughts were already swirling around in her brain before she started drinking.

I was gutted. She was not a partner or sibling or child of mine or one of the people who I would put in my top five closest friends. But she certainly was someone I saw as a friend, enjoyed her company and respected her thoughts.

The loss of someone who matters to you is a big deal. I have had friends who are divorced who are living happily today in a new relationship but still feel the loss of the marriage, and the loss of the shared memories with their old partner. For some it has been compartmentalized and they move on and focus on the here and now, but for others that loss moves with them like a shadow.

Friends with siblings they are estranged from, or children or parents they are estranged from often are like this.  I have seen it with one of my buddies who became estranged from his sister and never reconciled before she died. The pain of that just lingers, and I can’t imagine kids not having a relationship with parents or vice versa.

Now I am not talking about the cases where someone has turned out to be a monster or who has willfully set out to harm the other person but most of these situations are not that – they are very conventional, garden variety disputes between people who otherwise would have an ongoing relationship.

So how do I learn from this and move forward? Well, the adult thing to do is to apologize to her for whatever it is that I said or did to make her so upset. I am quite opinionated and at the drop of a hat will opine on many topics, some of which I really do know about and can add some value to the conversation and others, well not so much.  The friend who was so upset with me is much the same. When our thoughts are in sync, its fine but at times if not in sync the dialogue can go off the rails.

I did try to apologize at the time but she was too worked up so will try that again at one point so we might go forward with some level of relationship. But with that said, some things once said, can not be unsaid, so while I will apologize for whatever it was that I did to upset her, I know the relationship will never be the same.

In a volatile world with so many challenges ahead of us, it is our relationships that are more important than ever, and I am starting my seventy- first year down one, but the silver lining is for me that in future this experience has taught me to dial back sharing my opinions as often or with such vigor. It is important to learn from every experience.

Django