Friends

Tuesday brought news that caused some anxiety. All concerned friends.

It started when I received an e-mail from a very stressed out friend. She is facing all the dilemmas of being a carer. Ultimately I think her problem is that she doesn’t have that magical wondrous ability to wave a wand & make everything better for her loved one.

Later in the day we went off to the golf club. For some time we’ve been missing our cruising friends so we asked after them. They had been in but left in a storm, reckoning they were freezing without the heating on despite the room thermometer reading 20C. What’s up there, we wondered.

As we left we bumped into another friend, Ash, & heard the latest news of PD, our friend from the days of going regularly to the Pub. Last we’d heard he was in remission, having had chemotherapy for a lymphoma in his lungs. Apparently PD is very breathless. Ash went on to say that PD had put on a lot of weight – all the time we’ve known him he’s been around the 20 stone weight –now he’s 27 stone. We can’t help thinking an awful lot of PD’s problems would go if he could just get shot of some of that excess. It’s no wonder he’s breathless. Anyone would be carrying around that many bags of potatoes all the time.

Home we went. Over dinner the phone rang. Another friend, coughing badly away & sounding on her last legs.  I suddenly felt an echo of the hacking cough of my cousin Alma, who died last year with lung cancer. I rang my friend back. All is well. The frailty of her voice is just that she’s now 87. She’s decided to move home into more communal accommodation. She will have a flat with a bedroom, lounge, small kitchen & bathroom. Main meals will be provided & eaten together with other residents but otherwise life is independent. There’s a guest room available if she has family or friends come to stay a night or two. Before she moved, she’s decided to ring around all her friends to make sure they’re still alive & kicking before she has a whole lot of change of address cards sent out. By the end of our conversation she was laughing away. I told her about “Mrs Milburn’s Diary” & that set her off on her own wartime reminiscences. At least, all is well with her.

Since then, yesterday we bumped into the wife of our cruising friends. Clearly all is reasonably well with them. They’ve had a change in their usual routine – always disruptive & possibly a cause of the cantankerousness. I’ve also had a second e-mail from the first friend & she sounds reassured & once more looking up.

At times friends can be a worry, but that is a small price to pay to have them, & their love. We are lucky in being blessed to have so many.