Ever want to say hello to someone who has not bothered with you for years? Why not just do it?
I actually have a friend in that very category. This friend and I were in our hearts and lives connected for years and years; we spent time together before we were married to our respective spouses, spent time as young couples together and once we had children our families spent almost every Sunday through dinner together at each other's homes in San Francisco or Marin County. We washed each other's dishes, changed each other’s babies’ dirty diapers, looked after each other like sisters. When our children were grown we still spent time with each other, lots of it.
I was joyfully at her 50th birthday celebration. When the invitation went to her for my 50th, no answer. Nothing. Never sent an RSVP. Never showed up. A few days later I called. No answer. I was concerned. This was not like her at all. So, I wrote. No reply. I called and left messages of hello and concern on her machine. No return call. I sent another card. Nothing. I gave up for a while. But at her next birthday I sent a card with a love note telling her I hoped things were good with her and her family. No answer. For the next 4 years I sent a note on birthdays and at each New Year. Nothing.
I gave up on contacting her. And, the only reason I did not call her children was because I did not want to give the impression I was tattling on her or hear that she had long ago died. But, over the years, I did ask a couple of people who lived in her neighborhood if they had run into her. No, no one had.
In year number 9, I sent one more note. Nothing. I realized I had to let go the fantasy of a living relationship with her, but letting go of the friendship I did not do. I kept it in my heart right next to the sadness at her odd disappearing act. In year number 13, my Oakland cousin said to me one day at lunch, “Oh, guess who I ran into in Hawaii?” I had not a clue. When she told me the very name of my evaporated old friend, my heart skipped a beat and thundered a moment with relief. “Yes, she said the two of you had lost touch,” my cousin said. I was outraged; There was no “we” here at all. I, for sure, was not the one who had lost touch. At most, I had finally been shaken loose.
I processed this information for days, too numb to call her and not really knowing what the hell to say. To the rescue came a Berkeley friend who wanted to give me a little birthday luncheon of my childhood soulmates. I put my long-lost friend on the list. When she walked into the room with a smile and her arms outstretched for a hug I was overjoyed to see her looking beautiful as ever. “What happened?” I asked as we released each other from a long embrace. She looked thoughtful but said nothing immediate, so I added, “It’s been 13 years. I left messages and sent you letters.” “I know,” she said, quite simply. “Why didn’t you ever call me back,” I asked. “I don’t know,” she said quite simply and she looked a little baffled over the whole subject.
With that, the 13 vanished years seemed without consequence. The only important thing was that my old and loved friend was not ill, not dead, and, in fact, thriving and part of my life again. I will probably never know what happened to her for that 13 years and know that she may not either. What I do know is that I am ever grateful that I never let go of the friendship and that I made the effort to write to her regularly for the sake of keeping the road to me open in case she wantd to or was ever able to travel it again.
And, the joy of being able to bathe in the positive feeling of a loving friendship is worth gold. I was, over the years, reminded with every note I mailed that a love letter is not sent for what it will bring but as two separate gifts, one to the recipient and one to the writer.
If someone in your life seems to have dispensed with you, maybe you want to attribute the highest possible regard to that person, not take the abandonment personally and drop a note just to say hello. And as kind of a P.S. here, what do you think she gave me as a birthday gift that day we first saw each other after so long? A beautiful box of stationery. Yes.
From me to you with love in the air,
Janet
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