For The Friends I Don’t Frequently Speak To…

Who would have known that it would take a cracker’s commercial to finally wake me up to the reality. I know this is an odd way to start a post, but hear this sad history. This is one of the very few occasions I might seem human before the eyes of those who read these lines, since I don’t usually talk about personal matters.

Many years ago I made a new friend. I was barely a teen, he was already on his thirties (on the way to forties), but was such a vivid person, so full of youth, that anyone who would have met us both on the phone would think I was the older one. By that time he was a bus driver, and he took me and my family for a tour to a city nearby. We had barely met and I was already being the idiot I usually am, and, I remember this vividly now, I called his attention to the fact that he had a breath problem.

A couple of years went by and finally, in 2002, I began to work at an university where he drove students; He had to wait long hours between the times when students went into classes and the time he had to drive them home, so he started showing up at the copy-shop (where I worked) for taking coffee and talk the time away. As he was such a nice guy and an unquiet soul, he couldn’t just stand there talking while we worked, so he would jump the desk and come in the shop to help us with whatever we were doing.

By that time we were all making very little money, and having dinner at the university’s canteen was very expensive, so, instead, he’d go there and buy us all a couple of small packs of crackers and some soda. That was our dinner for most of that year.

When I left the copy-shop, I did what I do in most cases about my friendship: I took it for granted. I am the kind of friend that you can spend years without seeing and still feel at home when you finally come to my house. That’s just how I am as a friend; there’s no need for effort to keep my friendship. No need for weekly visits, nor phone calls or invitations to parties. If you have managed to gain my trust, it will be there forever (or until you break it). I will be the first one in your doorstep when I hear you’re in trouble or just needing a friend, but I will probably just ignore the invitations for parties and I won’t call, I won’t visit, I won’t say how much your friendship means to me. If you have to guess from my actions, you’d say I don’t care if you live or die.

That is probably the guess that this friend of mine had about me almost one year ago, when he passed out. He never knew I cared, and, to be honest, I didn’t really know that till tonight. Only about two or three months ago the news about his death came to my knowledge, but then I just acknowledged the information and went straight back to my little life. I knew he died, but it didn’t feel like it was so. Deep down I had not felt that, in truth, I’d never see him again, nor would I ever say good bye. Even his funeral I missed. Maybe not saying goodbye is what held this numbness for so long. Every time I thought about his death, I was thinking with brains, never with guts.

A few hours ago I was watching TV, just relaxing a bit, when this crackers commercial showed. The memory of the crackers went straight through my defenses and fell on me like a punch to the stomach! For the first time I thought of him as the friend he was instead of as a name someone told me had deceased. Now I’m here, understanding that we’ll never share a freaking cracker again, and that hurts more than knowing he died without even knowing he was still an important friend; without knowing I still cared.

He was exactly the opposite kind of friend than I am. He was that guy who was always around when he could! He was the guy who made parties, who invited, who called and cared all the time. I envied his sympathy, the way he cultivated friendships and, above all, I envied the way he made beautiful new girlfriends on a daily basis. We used to joke about the way he looked, saying he was convincing the girls that he was gonna turn into a prince after sex, because he looked so much like a frog (sorry, man!) and was always dating these beautiful women.

One of the main problems of being a skeptic is that there’s no scape from the wrongs we’ve done in the past. There are no ghosts out there to hear my late good-byes, no afterlife where we can meet again. As I face the future, wishing I won’t make that mistake again – wishing I’ll keep the ones I care close -, I see I’m up for a good fight against myself. I’m aware that I can never be a perfect friend, but Maninho, if I ever become half the man you were, I’ll consider myself a great guy!

PS: No need to remind me that he is not reading this! It just seemed a nice ending for such an emotional post

PSII: If he was reading this he would joke about it as it is, indeed, a very girly text.