Lifeline
My widowed dad has been asked out on a double date to a concert…with my college friend and her parents. He calls in a mild panic, all a-flutter. Should he accept? Will they allow him to pay for his ticket? What about a gift? The thoughtfulness of this invitation is fully understood only when one knows my college mate’s reputation – she is fiercely private and loathe to socialise. But she likes my dad and he likes her too – a no nonsense girl, he calls her after one of her hard nosed lectures.
So to the gift. He’s getting older and doesn’t like to go shopping if he doesn’t absolutely need to. I try to order something online but it won’t be delivered until after the date.
I ask my group of school friends if the local shops might deliver a gift home. Within a couple of hours, three of them have offered to have the gift bought and delivered to him. I don’t have the words to describe what I feel as I sit in my home half way across the country reading their messages. Later, when I call one of them to say thank you, she brushes off her generous gesture this evening with a cheery: Make use of the resources you have.
Resources. Let me tell you about mine.
So many friends, going above and beyond the call of friendship, stepping in, helping out. Hospital emergencies, falls at home, food sent around when the cook doesn’t show up. Spontaneous outings for ice cream, regular invitations for home cooked food or to the club. Always there, a steadfast and loving substitute family in lieu of careless or absent children. Even unto the end.
As I rushed my mom to the hospital one hot summer evening last year, a text message from the same asocial college friend lit up the ambulance: Here at the hospital. Waiting. She stayed, organising, haranguing, keeping us together until I begged her to go home and sleep. She was back the next morning. Another friend abandoned his own birthday party and came to the hospital that night. He stayed until he was sure there was nothing more he could do. A third arrived first thing in the morning with sandwiches and tea. He fed my mother and calmed her down. She was in a blazing bad temper by then. The tumour in her brain had made her irrational. She was convinced that we had abandoned her in the children’s ward overnight when in fact, she had been in the ICU.
The friends kept coming. Hugs, phone calls and messages, each an infusion of hope and support. A hospital room that miraculously became available after a phone call. Airline tickets and permission to fly out a sick old woman, ditto. Gifts of fruit and delicacies to tempt her appetite, emergency shopping for night dresses, introductions to famously busy doctors, offers of cars and drivers, a friend who supervised the entire shift from one hospital to another. Another who held a frightened old woman’s hand and sang to her after a sleepless night.
Later. A friend who cancelled his flight home to be there with us for the funeral. Another who flew in from her home town because she was his favourite girlfriend. The one who arrived the same evening to ask, what can I do? And then organised the most beautiful flowers for her memorial service. All of them, gathered around our table, raising a raucous toast to her the night after it was all over.
Each of them say the same thing in one variation or another: Don’t say thank you. You are my friend. You’d do the same for me. What goes around comes around. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. We are there for you. And now, they gather around my dad. They keep him protected in a cocoon of attention and caring. His daughter sleeps better at night, knowing this.
Resources is a lifeless, impersonal word, my friends. Resources may be bought and sold. I want to tell you what you really are: a lifeline. Priceless, perfect and precious.
Beautifully written
and yes nothing like good old friends