Friend

“‘I was thinking only yesterday afternoon about the relationship we’ve been building up, how valuable it was, something really good. But that was silly, wasn’t it? I was dead wrong, I …’

‘No, you’re dead wrong now, you were right then,’ he broke in. ‘These things don’t just stop like that, you know; human beings aren’t as simple as that, they’re not like machines.’”

-- from Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the nature of friendship. I’m lucky enough to have many friends in my life. The people that come to mind first are those that live nearby and that I talk to and see frequently. But there are many others. I’ve always referred to the girls that I run with as “my running friends.” I have many former coworkers that I now consider my friends. There are friends from high school that I have reconnected with, and friends from college that I seldom see, but never really lost contact with.

Although I am closer to some of these people than others, I’ve come to believe that it’s completely legitimate to refer to them all as friends. I used to think I should clarify the nature of my relationship with each person each time I talked about him or her. “Oh, he was my friend in the dorms during my first year of college.” Subtext: But we’re not really friends any more. “I met her through so-and-so, and sometimes we talk online about running.” Subtext: But honestly, I barely know her.

There was a day not so long ago that I was thinking through my list of friends, clarifying and classifying people like this. And the frightening thought that occurred to me was, if I sat there long enough dissecting my friendships, I would probably end up discovering that, by whatever mysterious definition of “true friend” I had in mind, I probably had no friends at all.

So, I stopped adding those qualifications each time I referred to someone as my friend. After all, there are many different kinds of friendships. And who knows? Perhaps the broadening of the definition of “friend” in my head would help me to treat the people in my life with the consideration that friends deserve.

But then Stephen died. (If you’re wondering how long it will be until I write a blog where he does not make an appearance… truthfully, I don’t know. But it will probably be a while.) In the weeks following his death, I thought a few times about the way I call so many people friends. I wondered if this habit had cheapened the word for me. I had a difficult time when I would tell other people, “My friend Stephen died,” because I found myself wanting to make more qualifications. But he was not just my friend. He was … my Stephen. Nothing but his name captured the nature and nuance of our friendship, but perhaps if I had been more conservative about using the word “friend,” people would better understand how much I cared about him.

This line of thinking is ludicrous, of course. Even if I was more stingy about calling people friends, it doesn’t mean that everyone else would be, or that everyone else would better understand how I was feeling. Besides, all of my friendships are unique. “Friend” does not adequately describe the details of any friendship.

But still, is it right to just call almost every acquaintance I have my friend? What does “friend” really mean, anyway?

Yesterday I saw the musical Wicked for the seventh time. I’ve said before that Wicked is my favorite musical, and last night reaffirmed that for me because even in its seventh viewing, it taught me something new. During the final song of the show, two friends sing a song to each other that says, “Because I knew you, I have been changed for good.” It makes me cry every time, and this time was no exception, because it made me realize a way in which Stephen will never die. He changed me.

While Stephen and I had a good number of things in common, we still remained two very different people. He saw the world through very different eyes than me, in both good and bad ways. Though I am something of a doomsday thinker, I find other people’s optimism encouraging; Stephen found it annoying. Stephen saw something worthwhile and interesting in almost everyone he met; I have a terrible habit of writing people off without giving them a chance. Being around Stephen forced me to think outside my normal lines and interact with people I normally would have ignored. He challenged my way of thinking. He changed me. And I’ll carry him with me always, in that piece of me he shaped.

Since his death, I’ve been afraid that I will forget him. I think of the months and years and decades I will continue living without him, and I worry that I’ll forget the sound of his voice or the ridiculous habits he had. And the truth is, I might forget those things. But that does not mean I will forget him. Our friendship did not end when he died, any more than it ended when we left college and rarely spoke. As Jim says in the quote at the top of this post, these things do not just stop. I have been changed for good.

I have rambled a bit through this post, but mostly I wanted to say that the experience of losing Stephen has taught me the value of allowing people that challenge you into your life. True friends, I think, are the ones that make you think outside your box and grow as a person. The beauty of that is, of course, that no two people are alike, and so every person on this earth has the potential to be my friend.

I can’t help but think that the previous sentence would have made Stephen want to vomit. In fact, there is another quote from Lucky Jim that I think sums up what his reaction would have been: “Dixon hesitated; Bertrand’s speech, which, except for its peroration, had clearly been delivered before, had annoyed him in more ways than he’d have believed possible.”

Yes, Stephen would find this post annoying, and that does make me wonder if this is all just mindless drivel. Even now, Stephen is forcing me to rethink this elaborate, philosophical conclusion I have drawn through mourning him. But that only reaffirms the fact that our friendship continues.