The Falling Leaves of Friendship

As I watched my young daughter play with a friend this afternoon, I overheard her playmate say, “We’re best friends forever!”

 

I smiled and thought about a few of my own childhood forever friendships long since ended, then remembered a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes that begins “Youth fades, love droops; the leaves of friendship fall….”

 

Friendships, I reflected, usually are not forever. For me, it’s been one of life’s most melancholic lessons.

 

My father was in the Navy, so from the time I was born until I headed off to college we moved every two or three years. I’d make friends in each new city, then we’d move 1,000 miles away and I’d never see those friends again. I enjoyed living in new places, but it was hard leaving friends again and again. By high school, I was tired of it. I assumed that once I got to college, I’d be old enough to make lifelong friends. And surely when I settled down – got married, bought a house – friends would be forever. I blamed the ephemeral nature of my friendships on youth and our military lifestyle.

 

In college, I was bemused by a professor once telling our class, “If you make three friends for life, consider yourself lucky.” Only three lifelong friends, I thought? Such poverty of friendship! In college alone, I met three great friends, people I knew would remain great friends 50 years later. After college, though, those friendships slowly melted away, as regular visits and phone calls turned to an occasional birthday or Christmas card, and finally to nothing. In the subsequent years, I enjoyed other wonderful friendships, each lasting a few years until fading away because of marriage, divorce, a job change or some other major life event. Eventually, I realized that my professor had been right.

 

Today, my wife is my best friend, and I still exchange an annual email or two with my best friend from high school, though he lives 1,300 miles away. I think those two friendships will last forever, leaving me one friend short from being lucky. I’m an optimistic guy, though, which is why I’ve got one eye trained on the tree of friendship, looking for another leaf I hope will never fall.