I didn’t know what to say to him. We were the best of best friends for so many years, but its been years since we’ve talked. It’s funny how friends slip away, but real friends are never more than a conversation away. After a series of “It’s been so longs” and a little catch-up small talk, boom, there you are. The intervening time slips away and it’s you and your friend.
We both have young daughters, mine is twenty-three. He has two, one seventeen another nineteen. I don’t remember them ever playing together. Four year’s age difference, divorces and dislocations on each side, too bad, it would have been cool if they’d been friends.
I’d gotten the bad news from a rickety series of emails and phone calls, last known addresses and parents still living in our old home town. My friend had suddenly lost his oldest daughter. Within hours I found myself speaking to buddies kept in touch with through the most tenuous of connections. We all have kids, none could come close to wrapping our heads around such a loss knowing we would come face to face with it over the next few days. I immediately called my daughter and told her I loved her as a feeling of helplessness enveloped me.
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