Friends

Recent posts of Shel's and Alicia's on this subject got me thinking.

Amongst my online cohorts are people who are friends, and people who might become friends with the passage of time. There are a number of people with whom I have had only peripheral contact, but whom I admire because of their resilience, compassion, skill or attitude.

In my offline life, I have friends of various categories, too. One of these friends is my boss. (She doesn’t like it when I call her that…) I’ve worked with her for 12 years- it’s a fairly small business, so for the most part, we’ve worked quite closely during that time.

We’ve become family. She stood up with me at my wedding to my late husband, Willis. (We were married on October 10th, 2003- happy anniversary, baby.) She attended the homebirth of my daughter, Sydney, and was Sam’s support person during that time. She came up to the hospital after Willis was killed.

We’ve cared for each other’s children, we’ve run a Sparks (the youngest denomination of Girl Guides in Canada) unit together, I was there when the family’s beloved and ancient cat finally slipped away. I have listened to hours of complaints and frustration about her projects, children, various staff members.

Sometimes, we annoy each other like crazy. Sometimes, our individual insecurities cause us to doubt the strength of our friendship and our loyalty to each other. She was experiencing one of those angst-filled moments recently. Life had been piling up its usual debris on her doorstep, and she was dissolving into tears. As I hugged her, she lamented that she had feared that I would be “poached” by a recently ex-staff member, and could switch allegiances and workplaces. I assured her that this was not going to happen; the difference in the quality of medicine alone in each of the locations would assure this. The next part of my response surprised me (and her, too!): I told her I loved her. It’s true, but it’s still slightly shocking to me that I would say this out loud.

I have other friends I know I feel love for; there’s no very good reason I don’t say this to them. Given how fragile life can be, and how alone we are on our journey through it, it makes sense to say out loud how much we appreciate and care for our friends. I hope I have the courage to say it aloud to my friends: I love you.