It Takes a Long Time to Grow Old Friends

This article is a reprint from a column I pen each month for the website of my high school class www.DanMccarty70.com.  While it has been over four decades since the 400+ of us exploded from the halls of Dan McCarthy High and into our lives, today over 250 of us still meet on a regular basis in cyberspace to remember, smile and stay in touch.  I hope you enjoy my Ramblings.

This Rambling is Dedicate to the Rev. Richard L. Parker Sr.

10/23/28 to 3/15/13

Camaraderie… blazed like a match tossed into a pile of dried palm fronds.
Backs were slapped, hands were shaken, hugs were exchanged, and laughter rang loud as a dozen friends of almost a half-century gathered to share a meal, laced with old stories, current news with more than a dash of exaggerations all tied neatly with a couple of downright lies.

This group might have resembled, from outward appearance, a meeting of the local chapter of AARP, complete with receding gray hair and more than one bulging waistline. But, in actuality, it was a gathering of Eagles, decades-long friends from the DMHS Class of 1970 with two ‘69ers, Greg Simmons and Joel Swain, thrown in as our token adult supervision—a job all will agree they failed miserably.

The reason for the gathering was simple and unpretentious. It was because this is what friends do; they get together, and they enjoy one another’s company. Maybe this enjoyment was “greased” with a bit less “lubricant” than in the old days, but the enjoyment was apparent nonetheless.

It started innocently enough. I’ve been traveling with no opportunity to spend even one night in my Melbourne Beach home since January 5. Because most of these guys and I talk much more frequently now than we did forty-plus years ago, we all seem to know what’s going on in the ebb and flow of one another’s lives today more than we did in our busier years, I wanted to see a few of my old buds and spread my share of exaggerations and little white lies. Simply put, I needed a recharge, and anyone of them is good for a quick pick-me-up and certainly a quick smile.

Speaking separately to Jim Lester and Bobby Harrell, both offered the invitation issued from friend to friend for centuries—“let’s do lunch.” A date was quickly set, and each told a couple of others, and before you knew it, our ranks had swelled to nineteen with twelve actually making it. By the way, Cal, Buckwheat, Rob, Ronnie, Eddy, Mike, and Stephen, we missed you all, but never fear, each of your names was taken in vain more than once.
By high noon, Doc and the hearty unmistakable laugh of Jim Huck joined Kenny, Ricky, Mitch, and Pete. But the highlight of my day was seeing, for the first time in more than thirty years, an old friend, Warren Crittenden.

For the next hour and a half, I reveled in the warmth and comfort of these time-tested friendships. Although I enjoyed the lunch, I think I enjoyed the trip home even more. I never turned on the radio or touched my cell phone. Instead, I rambled down that long dusty road of memories we all keep tucked away in that special place, reserved for those few friendships who have become forever woven into the tapestry of our life. One by one, I thought of these guys who have become not just friends, but more important, old friends. I couldn’t stop smiling.
I thought about the fact that, throughout my sixty-one years on this big blue marble, I’ve called a number of people my friend. Some, it turned out, justified that special designation, while others, no. As the Irish writer and poet, Oscar Wilde, said, “A true friend is one that will stab you in the front.” Although I’ve probably disagreed and, yes, even argued with nearly every man sitting at this table, not one has ever left a scar between my shoulder blades.

I realize that these guys understand me, and I understand them. When we are together, there is little pretense but a certain joy that comes from knowing our friendships have withstood the test of time. Many times in the last half-century, we each could’ve found a reason to end our friendship, yet each one, for his reasons, has chosen to do just the opposite. The ability to put aside misunderstandings and disagreements and even the occasional competition for the fairer sex to guard jealously a friendship is the mortar that holds the old friendships together.

Even that evening, after receiving half a dozen follow-up phone calls from my “lunchmates,” I still felt a warm and comfortable glow from the day, much like the feeling of quietly rocking in front of a blazing fire on a cold winter night.

I pondered why this group seems to be much closer today than we were forty years ago. I think our friendships, like each of us, have matured. Gone is the fear of what others might think, replaced with gratefulness that we each have somehow managed to sidestep the Grim Reaper for the past six decades. Most of us know full well that, on more than one occasion, had God not guided us to zig instead of zag, we could’ve (and should’ve) been prominently featured in the In Memory section of our website.

Thinking back on that day, it occurred to me that, as each arrived at the restaurant, handshakes were mostly replaced with bear hugs. And as we left, I heard one after another of these aging baby boomers issue the parting phrase “I love you, brother.” On my drive home, I could not help smiling, thinking about how that phrase would’ve been interpreted by our peers, if as the third period bell rang, I had turned Bobby Harrell and said, “I love you, Bobby,” and he replied, “I love you, too, Richard.”

Yes, our friendships have matured along with our receding hairlines and expanding waistlines. But it’s a good maturity, a comfortable one—one that wears like an old shoe, one that allows us to continue, after forty years, to want to share in each other’s triumphs and tragedies, accomplishments and failures, joy and pain.

These guys have taught me that a friend is one who walks beside you, never getting in your way, unless, of course, it is to keep you from falling flat on your face. Someone who can say just the right thing, without saying a word, someone who makes you understand that you are understood. And from time to time, when that inner fire flickers in danger of being extinguished, and it can in all of us, a true friend is there to rekindle it, without fanfare or recognition, but simply for the joy of seeing his friend’s spirit renewed.

I realize that one benefit of old friends is that they have had an opportunity to witness your stupidity… repeatedly. So, a friend is not surprised when you do something stupid; quite to the contrary, he knows you well enough to be surprised when you don’t. Yet through it all, he is still your friend.
Without saying it, I believe we each work to keep these friendships alive because we each understand just how quickly things can change. We know that each time another is added to the In Memory section, a small piece of fabric is abruptly torn from our life’s tapestry. Torn and lost forever.
Little did I know this would be brought home to me in a very real and personal way less than twenty-four hours after our final luncheon farewell. The next morning, I found myself speeding to the hospital as the doctors worked on bringing my eighty-four-year-old father through yet another heart attack. Having lost his wife of sixty-four years less than a year ago, the rate in which he continued to slide deeper into the dark recesses of the horrible disease known as Alzheimer’s had quickened.
Nancy Reagan described this accursed disease well when she referred to it as “the long goodbye.” I feel we have been saying goodbye to Dad for a decade. Like helplessly watching a man just out of reach sink slowly into quicksand, we have watched this wonderful man, father, husband, and pastor slowly slide into darkness, being not with us or gone, but hanging somewhere between.

As his second bypass failed, leaving him with less than 10 percent blood flow through a single artery, I found the joy of the reunion abruptly and callously replaced with a sense of renewed helplessness as I watched this next chapter in his and my lives begin, not by choice, but by destiny.
As a writer, I find solace in putting pen to paper. As I sat alone Wednesday night in a dark hospital room watching the flickering number on the heart monitor change to the soft cadence of beeps and alarms, I penned my e-mail to you as if talking to an old friend.
Almost three years ago, I decided to build our website and to write this monthly Rambling. For me, it has become therapeutic, a way to tell my feelings, some of which you might share, and some, not so. Other times, it feels as if I am laying bare my soul. It is not always comfortable, but the only way I know how to write is from my heart. But I understand I cannot do this halfway, and having embarked on the journey, I have committed to myself to do it to the best of my ability.
To my great surprise, the response to this decision has been such an outpouring of love from both old and new friends that it has humbled me. You, as a group, have become one of the great blessings of my life. Classmates I passed in the breezeways of DMHS with little more than a nod, today, mean more to me than I can put in words. It is said that everyone has a story, and that so many of you have allowed me to become aware, and in many cases, a part, of so many of these wonderful stories is more gratifying than I can put in words.

I speak often in these Ramblings of the friendships and love I have for this growing group of a few dozen guy pals. I guess the Southern gentleman in me makes it a bit more difficult to profess outwardly my love for so many of you ladies. But rest assured that you, too, are deeply loved and your friendship appreciated more than you will ever know. You each know who you are.
Over the past few days, I have received a torrent of prayers and kind words, helping so much. My wish is that the same tsunami of support will be given to each of our classmates as he or she travels the long and winding road of life.
“As I hasten to close” was a phrase my Southern Baptist preacher father often used as he wrapped up a long-winded Sunday sermon. It never ceased to amaze me how he could stand in the house of the Lord and tell a bald-faced lie without being struck by lightning—he was not hastening to close; he was only warming up.

So let me be a bit of a chip off the old block when I now say, “As I hasten to close,” remembering a quote from that great American philosopher, Mitch Hilburn, memorized in my June 2011 Rambling/Spotlight of Tradition’s Children.

http://www.danmccarty70.com/class_custom2.cfm (scroll down about three-quarters of the way)
I asked him whether, when looking back over his life, he had any regrets. Mitch floored me with his insight and wisdom as he replied:

“Dick, as a bail bondsman, I see people at their lowest point—in jail, desperately wanting to get out. I always ask them for a name of someone who can vouch for them. It is so sad to see how many people have no friends. No one has their back. Not a single person to count on in times of trouble. We do.” He went on. If you Dick, or Doc, Silverstein, Lester, one of my band mates, or a dozen other friends from the Class of ’70 called one of us needing help, we would all come. No hour would be too late, no distance too far, because we are friends, we are brothers, and we’ve shared a time in our lives that will always keep us close. My only regret is that everyone in our class could not feel what we feel.”

Mitch, my brother, reading back over your words of wisdom from almost two years ago, I still do not know how could I add anything to that.
So, today, as I hang on with white knuckles to this emotional rollercoaster I find myself riding, my mind keeps drifting back to a growing group of friends for whom I would not take anything.

Many of you have asked whether you can do anything to help. I have thought about that, and my answer is yes, you can. You can pick up the phone or type an e-mail to someone in this great Class of 1970 and tell him or her that you are grateful for his or her friendship. Do this today, for none of us knows what tomorrow might bring.

Keepin’ the Spirit Alive (with a little help from my friends),
Richard Parker
Thank you Dad for giving me an example of what a truly wonderful father, husband and man looks like. I will strive to emulate you and your life in all I do.