Friends

Old Friends, Opportunities and The Sands of Time

March 31, 2010 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Back in the time in which my friends and I were known as college students we used to gather upon special occasions. Mind you that in those days we were spread out far and wide and very few of us understood that we were living through a special occasion.

The gang as we collectively referred to ourselves then and now was a mixed group of boys and girls who had known each other for a while. Many of us had met in elementary school or junior high. By the time our university lives began we had the benefit of years of friendship together. We had seen the first loves come and go, witnessed more than a few life cycle events and used those things to build the foundation of the friendships that we still share.

Since we found ourselves scattered across the country we looked towards the holidays as a time when we could reconnect in person. As I sit here typing on my computer I find myself smiling at the memories, if for no other reason than the recollection that we had few of the modern conveniences to use.

It is funny, none of us feels old but in some ways we are. We didn’t have blogs, Facebook or Twitter to use as a way to stay in touch. As undergrads email was limited to those of us who were scientists. Long distance telephone charges were a serious concern that we monitored closely and cellphones were a dream that we referred to as a “car phone.” And those car phones were expensive and the province of some of our parents.

Holidays became valued not only for the chance to come home and see our parents but for the opportunity to reconnect with the gang. I suppose that I was naive but I always thought that eventually everyone would move back home and that holidays would be just one of many occasions upon which we’d see each other.

But life happened. Some of us died, others got married to the men/women they met in school and ended up in places other than home. And then life, oh sweet life happened in more ways and children came. And the coming of children created new bonds, broke old ones and forced more changes than most of us would have anticipated.

And now those of us who live in the same city still fight to find time to see each other. Busy lives mean that holidays still serve as moments when we set aside our concerns and spent time together.

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In a few hours a group of us are going to reconvene and turn back the hands of time for a bit. Some of the gang have come back home for the holiday and so we’ll gather those who can make it and do what we can to catch up.

It is an impromptu gathering so my own family is busy which is good and bad. I won’t get to show off my kids in person but the upside is that I’ll be able to focus on the conversations I do have. I’ll get to sit back and watch my friends play mom and dad. I’ll hold a new baby or two and admire how big the others have gotten.

Some of us will talk about Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s that are approaching with light speed. We’ll compare notes about dealing with the challenges of parenting and ask ourselves how we got sucked into the private school morass.

At some point there will be a moment when I’ll look up and realize that we have split up into groups of men and women. I’ll look around and listen as the guys talk about our stuff and eavesdrop for a moment on the girls.

I’ll smile as I enjoy the time with them now because I always do. But I’d be lying if I said that I won’t think back to moments long ago when we chased each other on the beach. Days gone by when we’d hope that the girls would bring along new friends that we’d hope would be “hot” and endless summer nights.

And as I sit there taking it all in I’ll remember how far away this time seemed to me. I’ll remember how we used to talk about how old 25 sounded, let alone 40. Opportunities were all that I used to see, endless opportunities that were uncomplicated by responsibilities.

Don’t get me wrong, life is very good now, but every now and then I wonder about that one time….

Friendship- Fulfillment

October 28, 2008 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

If you are one of the 17 long time readers you have seen various posts in which I have mentioned my friend ‘D.’ This past August marked ten years since his death. I don’t think about him everyday anymore, but I haven’t forgotten him either.

It is not unusual for me to see something that makes me think of him. It is not uncommon for me to sometimes wonder what he would be doing now had he lived. Ten years ago I was married, but hadn’t yet become a father. Ten years ago I was on a different career path. Ten years ago I was someone else.

That is kind of surreal, but it is true in many ways. So many things have happened to me that my life has been changed. The guy I used to be is how I sometimes think about it. The guy that I was has moved on to different pastures, perhaps they are better, perhaps they are worse.

‘D’ had a lock on what he wanted to with his life and who he wanted to be. I didn’t have that same fix. I had ideas. I had dreams, but there wasn’t any one thing that grabbed me with enough passion to make me say that I had found it.

Sometimes in the quiet moments of the night I sit and wonder how I got to be where I am. It is not that my life is terrible. It is not. It is not that I spend all my days moaning over the things that could have been, I don’t.

But at the same time I am very aware of the ticking of the clock and the fragility of life. I don’t expect to find myself overjoyed all day, every day. But I expect that I can be in a place where that happens more frequently. I find that my life is not giving me everything that I want. There are some holes, some empty places that need filling.

I know that I am not the only one who feels like this. My best friend has the same feeling. Other dear friends have also voiced similar sentiments. The big distinction among us is what we intend to do about this, how we go about dealing with those empty spaces.

There is no doubt that the answers are different for different people. What works for me may not work for others.

‘D’ and I used to discuss this. I suspect that he knew that his lifespan had been shortened long before the rest of us knew. To the best of my knowledge he was relatively at peace with it. I am not sure that I could have faced the end as stoically as he did.

When I think about these things relative to my children there is a lot that I want to say them. So much guidance that I want to provide. You look at your children and you want nothing but the best for them. When things are wrong you’re instantly primed for action, ready to go into battle if needed.

But the thing is that for some of the challenges that the kids face there is nothing that we can do but support them, tell them that we love them. It is very hard and uncomfortable to accept that no matter what we do sometimes they are going to get hurt. I suppose that sometimes the best that we can do is work on giving them coping skills so that when things get tough they know how to deal with it.

One of the best “skills” that I can think of is helping them learn how to be a good friend. Because if they learn how to be a good friend they will find themselves rewarded with good friends. And that is a reward worth having.

Crossposted here.

Does Time Heal All Wounds?

August 30, 2007 by Jack Steiner 7 Comments

Mama, take this badge off of me
I can’t use it anymore.
It’s gettin’ dark, too dark for me to see
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door.
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door-Bob Dylan

Nine years ago we buried one of my best friends. His yarzheit was August 25th. For those of you who are concerned, I don’t remember what the Hebrew date is. I just know that it is close to Elul and that this has always affected me.

His death was a life changing experience. He wasn’t the first friend that we lost. There were others that came before and after him. I don’t mean to demean or marginalize the loss of the others. Should their loved ones ever read this I don’t want them to feel badly. But they were different.

Car accidents, a bike accident, a couple of suicides took the others. Cancer took my pal away. It didn’t happen over night. It was a process that took a while. In some ways it seemed like it took forever and in others it felt like forever. Each week there was a gradual deterioration of his abilities. The cancer didn’t discriminate between cognitive or motor skills. It took huge bites out of all until there was nothing left to take. The giving tree was no more.

The first few years after his death were hard, far harder than now. It is not that I do not miss him, but I have grown accustomed to his absence. For a long time that bothered me. I felt like I was betraying his memory. If I didn’t feel that searing sense of loss I’d wonder what was wrong with me. It took a while to realize that I was healing and to accept that it was ok not to miss him every day.

After a while it was normal not to think about him, to not wonder what sort of advice he might have offered, to not feel badly that he would never know the pleasure of being a father etc. Still I made a point of not missing his yarzheit.

Each year I would take a few minutes to think about him and appreciate all that I had learned and gained from our friendship.

This year was different. This year was different because I forgot about his yarzheit. It didn’t even occur to me until today that I had. So I suppose that this is more proof that time heals all wounds. Yet I’d like to clarify that.

I may not feel that searing pain. The sense of loss may not be there, but the scars remain. There are moments when it is tough. There are times when I do very much wish that he was still here. When I get together with the crew there are moments that I look out at 35 or so kids and wish that his were playing with the rest.

There are those moments when the memories pop up. A dinner in Beverly Hills, a hike in the Sierras, flying over Catalina or walking down the street in Jerusalem. They’re bittersweet memories. They’re part of deep spiritual questions and tied into growth.

His loss changed me. It aged me. It made me question and wonder about things that I might not ever have. I don’t want to belabor the point or make this post any longer than it is. All I know is that I wish the old bastard was here to argue with me because I miss my friend.

I miss my friend. How many times have I said that recently and how many more times will I have to say it. Every now and then I am amazed to hear someone say that they have never been to a funeral. I have been to more than twenty.

It is Elul and I feel unsettled.

Dave’s Not Here, Man

July 1, 2007 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

The title of this post comes from a Cheech and Chong routine. It is not a bad bit but the expression has a different sort of connotation to me. The reference is tied into memories of a dear friend who died after from complications surrounding cancer.

When he first became ill there was period of time in which the cancer impeded his cognitive functions so severely that he began to have severe hallucinations. During this time I received a number of interesting telephone calls from him in which he described being abducted by aliens and asked me to come save him.

As I look back in time it is interesting to see how naive I was about it all. Back then there was no question in my mind that the doctors were going to save his life and that things would just go back to normal. I truly never could have imagined that things would be the way that they are now, but that is a story for a different night.

The reason the reference has such meaning to me is that the docs were able to beat back the cancer and for a time he was hale, healthy and whole. He loved to tell the tale of his illness and how the hallucinations affected him. Every time he told it he referred to that Cheech and Chong bit with great gusto.

“Dave’s not here man!”

We’d all laugh and the conversation would continue as if nothing had happened. Like I said, naive and innocent. Who would have believed that anything could happen to us. We were still in our twenties and invulnerable. But life has a way of opening your eyes to possibilities in a way that can be quite unpleasant. Four years later he was gone and it was only a short time before a few others joined him.

Hmm… I am on a real happy bent, aren’t I.

Dave’s not here man!

April 4, 2007 by Jack Steiner 1 Comment

“Dave’s not here man!”

What can I say other than it made a huge impact upon me. I learned not to take many things for granted and I grew a thicker skin. It was a hard lesson. It hurt and in some ways it still hurts. My skin still chafes when I can’t help friends, but then again I know how to shrug my shoulders and say that I have done the best that I can do.

Why am I writing this? Because I have a friend who is sick. It is a different sort of illness, but it is appropriate to describe it as “Dave’s Not Here, Man!” They aren’t in touch with reality. Their world is a very dark place and I fervently wish that I could do something to change it.

They may end up reading this so I am not going to provide any more details than I already have. All I can say is that I hope that they recognize how much support they have. I don’t know what is going to happen, but it would make me happy to know that they were conscious of how many people are pulling for them.

People say that we are born alone and that we die alone but I don’t believe that to be true. If you are truly lucky there are friends and family to accompany you. We may not be able to be there for the full journey, but our spirits walk with you.

Thirty-One Years of Friendship

September 15, 2005 by Jack Steiner 10 Comments

Kirk & Spock We met on the first day of kindergarten. Somewhere my parents probably have the paperwork to confirm the exact date, but for now it should suffice that it was early September 1974. We were standing in front of the school when G’s mom introduced us to each other and to a couple of other kids, Robert A and Damon if you must know.

G and I started playing together shortly thereafter both in school and outside. He and I both remember seeing our first bloody nose. Two of the kids got into a scuffle and when Robert punched the other little boy in the nose it bled for what seemed like forever.

As kindergarteners we worked on all sorts of projects together. I remember standing next to him as we hammered and sawed with real saws and hammers. G noticed that instead of sawing a piece of wood I had begun to cut my pinky. I still have the scar and for those of you who are wondering it didn’t hurt me, don’t know why, just that it did not and as a result I didn’t notice. As G will attest my attention to detail is sometimes sketchy but at the same time I can be incredibly focused on other things which is probably why I didn’t notice the pain.

G and I went to school together from 1974 through 1980. There was a brief separation from the fall of 1980 until the fall of 1984 when his parents sent him to a private junior high school. But even during that time we still spent a ton of hours together. We lived a block away from each other and it was uncommon for us not to spend the after school hours together, not to mention endless summer afternoons.

We rode our bikes everywhere, watched the Twilight Zone together and marveled over Kung Fu theater. We went to battle together as we fought some of the neighborhood bullies. There are stories from the week we spent as campers at Griffith Park Boys camp. I watched as the counselors helped him lace up a pair of boxing gloves and then stuck him in a ring where he fought Rashid.

G is a quiet and introspective. I suspect that they thought that Rashid was going to make G look silly, but they misunderstood and misjudged him. G and I had spent endless hours wrestling and I could verify that he was determined and stubborn. I knew that Rashid was going to go down in a heap and sure enough G set him on his ass more than once.

We were eleven years old and we knew that together we could not only take a grown man down but we would make him cry. All you had to do was ask us. We were partners, an unstoppable team.

It was a great friendship and an interesting one, the Jewish kid and the Baptist. I went to his church activities on numerous occasions, mostly because during the summers it cost 50 cents to take their bus to Zuma beach. Even though it was an evangelical church there was never an effort by anyone there or in his family to convert me. We have laughed about it because besides myself his other closest friend in the world is Jewish.

If anything it is more likely that he’d change teams to come play for our side. For that matter I have laughed on many occasions at the surprise people showed when they found out that he was not Jewish, but that is not what this post is about.

In high school we were on the swim team together. I don’t have to close my eyes to see him running alongside the pool during my races shouting instructions at me and if you ask I am sure that he remembers my colorful responses to his shouts.

For three years we ate lunch together almost daily, the few exceptions were generally due to Jewish holidays when I was in shul or the odd day or two when one of us were sick.

If you ever meet G ask him about the big fight I had with Victor Lopez. The truth is that Victor scared me but with G standing there I had no fear. He is the rock I really have always depended upon. The truth is that if G is next to me or close by there is no person I would be afraid to take on, he always is there if I need him.

We even went to the same university. The truth is that for almost my entire school education G was a part of it in one way or another.

For thirty-one years he has always been there. Ask him about how many times I knocked on his window in the middle of the night and made him get out of bed to go do something. He was my best man and I was his.

As you have probably gathered I have been privileged with the best kind of friend, a brother-in-arms who cannot be thanked enough for all that he has given me. There are so many stories, so very many that I could write about and perhaps I’ll share more of those at a later date, but right now I can’t because my heart is heavy.

G is leaving town. He is moving across country and the truth is that it is killing me. There is a quiet strength about G that just sums him up so well and in some ways it sums us up. There really are not words that we can use to share our experience. He is leaving for a bunch of reasons not the least of which is that he got screwed in a divorce in a big way so it is time for him to spread his wings a little and see some new things.

I am upset because my anchor is setting sail. One of the things that I have been blessed with is some incredible friends and friendships that are so special and so important to my life that I sit here fumbling for words.

He is not leaving forever and it is not like we will not see each other again. Our parents still live in the houses we grew up in and when we visit the old neighborhood we sometimes run into each other.

Our lives are so very busy now that we do not get to see each other too often and sometimes we speak less frequently than we might like, but there was something reassuring about having him around and I know that one of the many reasons I am going to miss him is watching him with my children.

But the bottom line is that I want him to be happy and even if I had real influence over the decision to leave I would not prevent him from going because I think that this is a necessary part of his life and personal growth.

G you know that I love you and that I am a plane ride away. You give the call and I am there. Like we always said we are the calvary and I will answer the call. You be safe and you do what you do to move on.

I’ll see you on Sunday and we’ll hang out a bit but I will not say goodbye because you know that I just can’t do that.