Of Friendship and Beer
Dean came round my house last Friday. I was pretty surprised as we hadn’t spoken for about a month. We’re good friends, or at least had been for the better part of a decade, but had a falling out the last time we saw each other. Hence the previously mentioned vow of silence.
Luckily, he’d always known how to be the bigger person and that is why he wanted to see me. He felt we needed to make amends and talk about what had happened. Like typical men, we could only partake in such girly behaviour over man-sized glasses of beer, so we left my place and went to our usual watering hole.
“Why did you say that, again,” Dean asked as he took a hefty swig of his beer.
We became friends when we were both still in high school. With the death of his mother, and his father passing a few years before, he entered our high school as an orphan. He was taken in by his grandparents who lived in my hometown, and I have to say that he took it all in good stride. At least, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to handle it so well had it been me.
“Because you said something after something happened and then I had to do something,” I replied, quickly taking a large gulp of my own beer.
You’ll have to excuse all those somethings. For the life of me, I can’t remember what had gotten us fighting. Anyway, it’s irrelevant. The importance lies more in what was going on at that moment. We were once again sharing our friendship over a couple of beers like old times.
Hindsight, though.
“Yeah, I guess I see your point. But still, not cool.”
“No, it wasn’t, was it? Heat of the moment kind of thing, I guess.”
And I wasn’t wrong. I, much like the rest of humanity, have a tendency to get carried away. You mention something about my life, I rebut with something concerning your face, and before we know it we’re cursing each other five generations into the future. Pride is what follows, and pride does not apologize. Soon enough, a lifelong friendship stops existing and a little part of you withers and dies with it.
“Water under the bridge, my friend.”
This guy. It has always been beyond me how he could forgive and forget so easily. Maybe with the loss of both his parents, he gained a perspective of life which I had yet to gain myself. Maybe he knew how to appreciate what he had while he had it. It’s hard to say.
But that was Friday and today is today. The scene has changed from the bar to my place of work, and I have just received a phone call. The call was quick and clinical, but left me feeling confused and unsure of myself. I know I need to feel something, but I’m incapable, or is it unwilling?
My mind races back to Friday and how it now may have been one of the most pivotal days of my life. Going to a bar and having a few beers while discussing life, love and everything else, had become a long-running tradition for me and Dean over the years. It allowed us to touch base, as we did on Friday, and quite frankly it had kept me grounded.
But the ground has now given way beneath me and I’m feeling as if I’m floating, not anchored to this world.
See, the person that was on the other side of the phone a minute ago, was Dean’s grandfather. Dean was driving home from work the previous night and got into a car accident.
He didn’t make it.
And I never uttered the word “sorry.”
