A Friend Revisited

I returned home yesterday from a visitation and funeral. I left Thursday after school and returned Friday after the funeral. It is nice to be back home but seeing my close friend was truly special. I have not seen him in a long while. We spent almost the entire time at the visitation, and at his uncle's house afterward, reminiscing about all of our adventures as teenagers. I feel that me being their really lifted his spirits, and mine, and took us both back to a time when we had no worries. The thing that was amazing to me is that we shared these memories and each of us seemed to have the exact same warm feeling about these specific times. I know that sounds weird but after so many years of just keeping memories to yourself you begin to wonder if you embellish on them in your mind to make them more desirable. In a way, it was validation, in our minds, that we have lived full and happy lives up until this point. We both spent a lot of time laughing. We even took the time to talk about some of the important things in our lives going on currently. You know, bragging about our kids and wives, how our jobs were going, etc. We talked about points such as "What are the advantages and disadvantages of private school?", "Large schools and small schools?", "Should kids be playing sports year round?", "How much of what we learned have we put to use in our lives?". Deep conversation, right? Somehow it didn't feel that way. It was amazing how we talked. I mean, we haven't seen each other in around fifteen years and we started talking like we hadn't been apart a day.

Friends are truly special! I know that all of us are guilty of this, taking friends for granted, but I think we should all step back and take a look at how lucky we are to have close friends and people that love us. Who knows, we could be the next person to be celebrated at a funeral. Wouldn't it be nice to know that we all took the time to talk and stay in touch with our true friends, and family? As we both said several times, it would have been nice to get together under different circumstances, but at least we got together.