Friends and Friendship

This weekend was a new technological first for me...

I found about the death of an old friend through Facebook.

The details of his death are still a bit sketchy, and there has not been an official obituary yet. He died of either respiratory complications of illness or a heart attack. At 30 years old he was still very young.

This experience made me contemplate life, death, my relationship with friends, the paths those friendships have taken, and how I would like them to be. It also made me realize that they can be gone instantly with no warning whatsoever.

Now in this persons case, I don't regret our drifting apart. We were friends in Elementary school and Jr. High, our common interests in Basketball cards and the Utah Jazz made us friends...pretty much the same as every boy! I remember in 4th grade trading a random (but good) basketball card to him for an old card he didn't care for much. The player in the card had hairy armpits and a huge fro (to a 4th grader anyway), and a red white and blue basketball held high over his head. Turns out this card was a "rookie" card for Julius "Dr. J" Erving which at the time was worth around $250, an unimaginable fortune for a 4th grader.

(I guess Basketball cards in general are worth less now than they used to be, so you can probably find this for around 100 bucks, depending on condition) I didn't find this out until later, and it had already been 'swindled' from me by another of our basketball card-trading friends. Ahh to be very young and very naive again... as opposed to not that old and still quite naive like I am now!

By High school our interests and activities were too far apart to really associate too much. He moved more into Baseball if I remember correctly, and I moved away from team sports entirely.

I feel for his family and close friends. I wish them comfort and healing for their loss. It was a sobering reminder and opportunity to reminisce and remember the good ol' days, and I wish his close ones all the best.

Like I mentioned earlier, this experience made me contemplate life, death, and relationships with people I consider to be friends.

I do not fear death. Not for myself at least. My biggest fear in that regard being what will happen to my family if I were to die, or what I would do if I were to lose one of them.

As for life - it is a valuable, wonderful, amazing thing that we need to take advantage of - for you never know when you will leave this stop on our cosmic journey, short as it is.

Finally Friends. What makes us friends? What keeps us that way? In some ways I feel like other than my wife I don't really have any close friends because I never see or keep in contact with anybody other than superficial things like Facebook or Instant Messaging. I love Facebook and Instant Messaging because I can then at least keep in contact with people I otherwise have no way or time to be in touch with them.

I wish I had the time and energy (and money!) to keep in regular contact with important people from my life. There are people in Russia who I would love to keep in contact with but I cannot (I really appreciate Facebook for letting me know how some of them are doing!), and close friends from High School who are in the same situation I am and are busy with work and family and LIFE.

I guess I just feel like I am not the best friend. As I age, it's something I ponder more and more and it still confuses me a bit how I cannot seem to get it. I guess I'll just continue to ponder and consider until I find a way to be satisfied with my abilities as a friend.