Friends for Life

The evolution of friendship and the passing days

Photo by ROMAN ODINTSOV

In my email inbox the other morning was this note from someone searching for a long-ago acquaintance:

I am looking for my former best friend, Dave Berner, who used to be my baseball buddy in Corte Madera, California.

It was signed and dated.

The email came through my website email, the sender likely did a Google search and found me. He may have found many other David/Dave Berners, of which I know there are several.

This was my response:

Sorry - not that Dave Berner. Never lived in California. But I did play Little League and high school ball, catcher. Keep searching!

I haven’t heard from him again.

The exchange got me thinking: What happens to our old friends, the ones we once held so close, the ones who fade away, who were so much a part of our lives but in time, for whatever reason, have vanished in the years?

There’s an old phrase you may be familiar with: Friends for a season, friends for a reason, friends for life.

I can put nearly all my friends, the old and the new, in those three categories.

There was Mark, a neighbor when I was six or seven years old. He lived on our street for only a summer, and we became very close. Every day we were together playing at his house, at mine, in the nearby woods. But his family moved away in that fall. I never heard from him again, although I remember him like it was yesterday. A friend for a season. In high school, I was in a rock band (who wasn’t?) and the bass player was not necessarily someone I would have hung out with, but we needed a bass player. So, friend for a reason. We became friends and it was good, but when the band broke up, I never heard from him again. And friend for life? Got several, depending on how you wish to designate the start of a life. Let’s go with college, some forty-five years ago. I have several friends I may not connect with for months and months, but when we talk on the phone, it all comes back and we’re as close as we were decades ago.

So, back to the email inquiry.

What category does this elusive Dave Berner fall into? What could have happened for these two men to lose track? Maybe it was as simple as distance, time, new priorities. Many times, people simply explain it by saying, “We outgrew each other.” Or maybe there was a falling out, something tangible that now has been forgotten and one of them is now hoping to find the other.

Time and distance might be behind the disappearance of an old friend of mine, although it’s still a mystery. Someone I was very close with more than ten years ago is no longer in my life and I’m not sure why. A few years ago, he moved 500 miles away, yet for a time we remained close. Then he simply faded out of my world. Over the years, there was little contact. When big events happened in our lives, we somehow accepted that we would not be sharing any of them with each other anymore. You might say that friendship withered. Maybe out of neglect, but whatever it was, I remain perplexed.

Next fall is my 50th high school reunion. Talk about old friends. Many of you may still have strong ties from those days. Not me. I had good high school years, but friends from those years are gone from my circle. I have some interest in what may have happened to some of them, a curiosity, but beyond that there’s not a deep connection to high school. My true bonds came in college. Many of those friends remain even if I don’t talk to them much these days.

I’m not likely to attend my reunion. Friends for seasons, that’s what they were.

Facebook and other social media have helped to reconnect old acquaintances for many of us. I’ve had a few rekindled this way. Some even former high school friends who started a FB page for promoting the reunion. But although it’s been fun to reconnect at some level, those moments have been brief, and they are not likely to stick. What do they say? You can’t go home again.

Friendship is a complicated thing. It contains so many facets. But there is one aspect that runs through them all. Good, lasting friends share a measure of equality. The friendship is mutual. Both work at it, stay present, share. If this can’t be sustained, the friendship eventually dies on the vine.

Dodie Clark, the beloved blogger from the UK and author of the book of personal stories, Secrets for the Mad, wrote:

“Life is a bus ride, with only so many seats. It took me a long time to comprehend that sometimes people had to leave my life, to make room for the better ones, but once I understood that it became easier to let go, and I was surprised at just how quickly new, interesting people somehow found their way onto my bus.”

The key, I guess, is to stay on the bus.

And for that man searching for his “former best friend”— keep looking, buddy, keep looking.

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David W. Berner is the author of several books of fiction and memoir. His book Daylight Saving Time: The Power of Growing Older is now available for pre-order.