There are so many indignities about getting old, but one of the ones that doesn’t often get mentioned is how difficult it is to maintain relationships.
When you’re younger, you spend a great deal of time either at work or traveling to and from work. Your colleagues and the other people you come in contact with might be friends and acquaintances, but even if they’re not, they make for human contact.
Then you have family and friends and the people involved with whatever outside activities you choose to do.
If you’re lucky, you have close friends. People who truly care about what’s happening in your life and how you feel about it.
The above picture is from a reunion of my college fraternity. I’m the one sitting on the floor at the right, the one with the Lucchese boots after my summer in Texas. I probably don’t know more than eight or 10 people in the picture; we were all Sigma Phi Epsilons at George Mason University at different times.
But the few I did know, it was like stripping away 30 years and picking up where we left off.
Sinmce the reunion in 2010, my contact with them has only been through Facebook, except for a day in October 2017 when I played in a fraternity golf tournament. I won two prizes, only one of which required an achievement. At 67, I was the oldest player. But I also won the award for Closest to the Pin after hitting one of the very best golf shots of my life.
My closest friend in the fraternity died unexpectedly a couple of years ago, just as one of my closest long-term friends in the world died in 2016.
I miss both of them, but even my 50-year friend and I talked on the phone less than once a year.
The person who has been the most significant friend in my life since I was 15 years old has all but vanished in the last couple of years. He has gone through horrible things in his life, and there was a time I was there for him. Twice when I lived in Reno I won video poker jackpots and sent them to him in a time of need.
But that was nearly 35 years ago, and in the last decade or so, while he has worked through problems from earlier in his life, I made only minimal efforts to help and eventually stopped trying at all.
I’m not sure I was ever a great friend to anyone. I think if there’s one thing I have done reasonably well when it comes to personal relationships, it’s probably being a dad. I never had the chance to father a child. My first marriage ended when I was still in my twenties and I was well into my forties before the second one came along.
I was truly blessed to acquire two wonderful children in my second marriage. They were 12 and 7 at the time and they have been a truly wonderful part of my life for the last 30-plus years. Along with my wife Nicole, the two kids and their famiies are pretty much the only people active in my life anymore.
My four younger siblings are still alive, but the relationship is complicated and only one of the five of us is talking with all the others. It isn’t me.
There are entire weeks — maybe months — when the only personal contact I have with anyone who really matters to me is with my wife. We’re both 73, and with women in this country generally enjoying a longer lifespan than men, at least I’ll have her to talk to.
I’ve written before about the elderly woman who died in Indiana just before Thanksgiving 2008. The had been the oldest person in America and was 115 when she died. She outlived her husband by 69 years, and outlived all her children and her grandchildren too. Her only loved ones still alive were great- and great-great-grandchildren.
I remember thinking if I lived that long, my first grandchild who was 2 months old at the time would be 57 years old.
It’s terrible to die too young, but sometimes I think one of the worst things that can happen is if you live too long.
You lose people who die before you, but sometimes others just walk away.
It’s so easy to forget what really matters.