Front Porch: Friend’s move brings sadness

A good friend of mine is leaving the area, and though she hasn’t quite gone yet, I already miss her terribly.

It’s hard when a really good friend moves away. Moving away is better, of course, than the other way I have lost good friends recently – through death – but it is still a loss.

Yes, I know about Skype and all the other ways to stay in touch, but they’re not the same as being present in the same orbit, not the same as going to a film at the Magic Lantern and then sitting face to face afterward to talk about what we’ve just seen and meandering into four hours of conversation about everything and nothing.

My husband is continually amazed. “Just what is it you can talk about for so many hours?” he asks. I’d be hard pressed to tell him exactly, but with a good friend, the time just goes by all too quickly.

Perhaps as I’m getting older I find myself cherishing my women friends even more, and perhaps that’s because more of them are dying or moving away. And some who are still here, their lives have moved in different directions and we’re not as close as we once were. That’s life, I know, but I also know that I feel the loss.

I am fortunate to have counted some remarkable women among my friends. But there are just a few who I trust so completely and feel so comfortable with that I know I can speak to them about absolutely anything. Not that I feel the urgent need to unburden myself about anything, but if I did, this friend who is leaving is a person I could do that with. I had another friend like her, but she died two years ago. I still miss her.

My friend’s imminent departure comes after many decades of friendship. She and her husband shared meals, conversation, pinochle, politics and assorted life crises and celebrations. He died two years ago, and I have admired her strength and dignity as she handled the details of unwinding their joint lives, divesting of material things, deciding to sell her home and temporarily relocating as she made decisions about work and where she wanted to live once retired.

One of many tough decisions was about her job, which she dearly loved – at least until recently. Things change in the workplace sometimes, and we find ourselves no longer a good fit there. Sometimes that’s our fault and sometimes it’s the fault of bad policies and bad management choices. We talked about that a lot, about what to do about a deteriorating work environment.

Recognizing that the tide had irrevocably turned, that she would not be able to effect changes and that she could no longer tolerate what she saw as an inexcusable deterioration of quality of service to clientele, she elected to retire – earlier than she had hoped to. Working out the finances, deciding where to go and everything else that goes along with such major changes – well, she handled it all with grace and class.

Not that she didn’t get mad or sad. We went through a lot of that together, too. But through it all, I never heard a “why me?” or perceived anything other than a woman who was responsible for her own life, her own choices and her own future. During all this time, she also held my hand when I needed hand-holding and celebrated with me the joys in my life. True friendship is a two-way street.

For women in particular, we have the need for good girlfriends in ways different than men, I think, need their men friends. I am not one of those people who have a lot of really close women friends. I do have friends, happily, and several who I consider pretty good ones, ones with whom I can share things about my life and thoughts (and theirs as well). But really close and intimate friends – not so many.

So it is particularly sad to me when one of the best of my friends moves away. I have been observing how the circle of friends is getting smaller. My oldest friend from childhood died several years ago. A high school friend decided our political differences were sufficient enough to break the connection. A woman who became a good friend when our boys became friends as babies and grew up in each other’s houses also died a few years ago.

And, I’m glad to say, I have made new friends over the years. But there is something about old friends, friends with whom you share so much history, who are irreplaceable. And their physical presence matters.

Leaving town isn’t death, but sometimes it feels a little like it.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net. Previous columns are available at spokesman.com/columnists.