Friends

It is funny to me, and maybe it is just me, but when I see the people that mean so much to me it is hard to say what I want to. The time isn’t right. The company. The occasion. To tell them how much they mean to me, but then I look at their eyes I realize that what wasn’t said has been communicated already by some translucent connection…it is enough to just be…to smile and move on. 

Friendship is funny like that. How do those connections form? Conversation. Time spent. Hardship. Life lived. Bearing burdens. Grief. Before you know it there is connection. Not visible by naked eye. You become unguarded because you know you are safe. You can spill your guts because you know you will still be loved. You can be corrected or correct and that connection is so strong it remains unshaken and unbroken. 

I am late to the party but my Dad’s birthday was August 12. He would have been 73 years old. My thoughts about my Dad over the last week have been, heavy, burdened, stuck. I feel like I have been in one of those dreams where you know it is a dream, but you are trying to run and you are moving slower and slower, unable to run as fast as you need to. My heart has been numb, my heart dull. Just full of fog. Full of emotion at random but mostly just deadened.

I don’t know when my Dad and I became friends but it must have been early. My Dad was and is my hero. At 5’6” he was still larger than life to me. He was strong. He ran long distances. He could throw a football and shoot a basketball well. Baseball. Cricket. Soccer. Ping pong. We played it all. My favorite times were just playing catch with him. It was easy and relaxed. We both loved it. I would always ask him to throw it a little too far to my left or right so I would have to dive for the ball. Make some kind of “hero” catch. I can picture it. I can picture him, still in his BDU’s (Battle Dress Uniform) throwing me the ball. 

He was gentle but firm. I still remember when I was 11 or 12 in a birthday card, my dad saying something like “I am sorry I have been so hard on you, but I want you to grow up to be…”. The irony was I just wrote a similar birthday card for one of my sons, calling him out but calling him up. My Dad for my childhood and teens was my best friend. He really should have been the best man at my wedding, and if I had been wiser, I would have leaned on him more in my 20’s and 30’s. 

My parents weren’t perfect. No one’s faith is 100% consistent. We wax and wane like a candle, sometimes sputtering almost snuffed out and sometimes burning hot. But our faith isn’t based on our effort, is it? The fuel that burns, the source, that is where we derive our joy and satisfaction and strength, being Christ and Him alone. I remember when we lived in Guam, my parents hosted a youth bible study. Had all these kids showing up. I don’t remember a single thing my dad said. Not one thing. I do remember laughter, singing, wrestling (actual wrestling…lol. My dad got challenged and proceeded to pin the larger young man down in short order), prayer, and even tears. We bore each others burdens. I learned about losing a friend at that time. I remember that so vividly. Horrible burning tears that seared my heart. How could it be? How could my friend be gone? Our whole household wept but my dad found me and wept with me as I asked those unanswerable questions. How? Why? 

I think about death. I think about my Dad’s death and I want to ask those same unanswerable questions. I want to scream that it isn’t fair, to shout in anger, to break and smash whatever I can get my hands on, to swear and damn it all. But all this just plays out in my head and I am sometimes reeling with it all. 

I wish I had said more. Wish I had listened more. Wish I spent more time with him. But last time I saw him I said “I love you” and “goodbye” looking him in the eyes before I left. All the rest of it? He was my friend. There wasn’t anything else to be said.