On Maintaining Friendships
“A man . . . should keep his friends in constant repair.”
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson’s words haunt me. On a recent trip to Colorado, with a group of backpacking buddies, Johnson’s appellation echoed in my remembrance, bedeviling me. Before David, Chris, Robert, and Scott (who got sick a few days before our trip and had to bail out), I trailed the mountains of Colorado with my oldest friend, Randy.
Grown into manhood and married, he and Diane became Texpats in Alaska, where he built a life as a successful architect. We saw each other, oh, maybe once a year and spoke often by phone. But not often enough. At least no often enough for me to pick up the subtle clues he no doubt breadcrumbed before taking his own life.
That was March 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The wound he inflicted upon me by the wound he inflicted upon himself has healed in large measure. And yet, the wound weeps now and again.
I thought about Randy and ol’ Sam’s words on this past trip to Colorado. We weren’t backpacking this time around. Instead, we decided, like the old men we are (Scott and I being the elders in the group), to take it easy—to spend a few days in Chris’s family cabin on the banks of the Rio Grande.
Just before we arrived, we crossed a small bridge over the great river. I mentioned, if we had been alive some 170 plus years earlier we would have ranged over from the Republic of Mexico into the Republic of Texas. The observation caught the others off guard. They had not thought about it. But it was true. The land on which the little cabin on the Rio Grande sat was once part and parcel of Texas. Stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to its headwaters in the San Juan Mountains of present-day Colorado, the lands lying north and east of the Rio Grande once belonged to the Republic of Texas, including the “stovepipe” that cut a swath through some of the best ski country in the United States, all the way to southern Wyoming. That was before the government of Texas sold large tracts of New Mexico and Colorado to the federal government to pay off the Republic’s debts.
I’ve given careful consideration to that question since returning home. I think on the whole, yes, given the physical distance between the two of us—a distance that would strain the strands of any friendship because of the difficulty and expense of strengthen those bonds face to face. And yet, honestly, I confess in many ways I took my friendship with Randy for granted. We had been friends since the first day of second grade. I assumed (foolishly) we’d have more time, years, in fact. With the kids grown and out of college—and funds freed up—Christy and I planned a trip to Alaska to see Randy and Diane. Then the pandemic. Then his death. And just like that, all I had assumed evaporated.
There was no more time.
Perhaps this was why, knowing this trip to Colorado was forth coming and the weather was going to be cold, and David is bald, I bought him a cowboy toboggan—a woolen cap worn by working cowboys in the winter. A year before, he and Chris accompanied me to Fort Davis to pick up a custom made cowboy hat. We stopped at Big Bend Saddlery in Alpine to pick up a few things and David saw the cowboy toboggan. He wore it around the store for a few minutes, then put it back. A moment later, he was fiddling with it, looking at the price tag, and trying it on again. And again, put it back. When I asked him about it, he said he had already bought something and that Jamie would have his hide if he spent too much money.
David has been a good friend, not just to me but also to my family—to my boys especially. The woolen cap he wanted was a small enough gesture to express my gratitude for his friendship.
Back in Texas, after hours of mulling over Samuel Johnson’s words and how successful or not I applied them to my friendship with Randy, I’ve determined to be more conscious of the people God has brought into my life and of the friends I’ve acquired. I no longer want to take any of them for granted, but to do all I can to maintain my friendship and keep them in constant repair.
Now that ‘bout made me tear up! 🥲
Seeing you and David brought back good memories. I have always loved your writing! Sending both of you a hatful of love.