Recently I’ve been thinking about friendship. I’ve been under the weather for some time with pretty much undiagnosed ailments. Well, I’ve been diagnosed, but each doc tells me something different, so I’ve been treated for a variety of infirmities with way too much medicine, so I called a halt to that (with doc’s knowledge). Too many meds in your body make you a zombie.
A few weeks ago, I felt so bad, I called my doc. I was given a 12:30 appointment for a steroid shot. I lay down, thinking I’d feel better, but when I very slowly got up an hour later, I could barely walk, dizzy, holding on to walls. I lay back down and thought I should text my son who held my health power-of-attorney since I decided I was sliding downhill for the final exit. Circling the drain. All I texted was I had a doc appointment for a shot and felt awful.
He immediately Face Timed me. One look and he said, “Can you drive to the doctor?”
I didn’t know.
“You’ve got to call a friend for a ride.”
“I don’t have any friends,” I cried. And I mean cried. Tears rushed down my face.
“You have friends. We’re going to hang up and you’re going to call someone then call me back. Or I’m going to call 911.”
I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone, but I called a friend. “This is Veda. I need help.” My voice couldn’t have sounded more pathetic.
Her alarmed voice: “Veda, what’s wrong? I’ll be right there.”
That quick response had me sobbing.
It is much easier for me to help someone than ask for help. I’m glad to help. Makes me feel needed to help someone. My son said true friends feel that way. He’d already contacted my closest (45 minutes away) son, who said of course he’d come, but now I had a ride, and I was over my nobody-likes-me-everybody-hates-me-guess-I’ll-eat-some-worms pitiful childish feeling.
For decades, Jim and I held an annual Christmas Cheer party. We invited close friends. Our guest list criteria (just between the two of us) was that these were people we could call at 2:00 a.m. and they would come help us. It goes without saying that we’d be there for them. I recall one friend later saying he enjoyed our parties so much since there was such a variety of people from every walk of life. Yep. [See November 2019 essay, Reflections in the Mirror.]
Yesterday, a friend emailed a poem about friendship that she said reminded her of me. (We later talked, and she offered to fly here and go with me to a scheduled specialist appointment. What an anam cara!) This poem was written by Irishman John O’Donohue. In part:
May you treasure your friends.
May you be good to them, be there for them and receive all the challenges, truth, and light you need.
May you never be isolated but know the embrace of your anam cara.
Of course, I didn’t know that Gaelic term “anam cara,” so I looked it up. I don’t know much about the ancient Celts, but I believe they felt things deeply and spiritually. Anam Cara means soul friend, someone you can completely and honestly be yourself with, someone you have an accepting and truthful bond with.
The Gaelic language also gave us the word hiraeth, meaning homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was. [See March 2016 essay: Hiraeth.] But don’t get the impression the ancients gave us only serious expressions.
One of my favorites:
Old Celtic Prayer
May those who love us, love us.
And those that don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if he doesn’t turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles,
So we’ll know them by their limping.
