Since this thread I've had a message left on my cell phone from an old friend that I'd been friends with since sophomore year of high school.
We had always been around for each other through the least attractive and most fragile moments of our lives. One for him was the death of his 13 year girlfriend/then fiance (cancer) which then led to the complete breakdown of his life. For me... (naw that's a different story.)
They had moved to California back in 89 to start their lives out there in their similar lines of work (acting and production). She had been in and out of remission for the next 9 years until her death in 98..
Several months after her death - my friend now on a missing person's list was found wondering the streets, naked in Studio City, CA. He was hospitalized and then institutionalized for several months. When he could he contacted me - mostly by letter, sometimes by phone.
I didn't know how to help him so for a long time I just listened and read.
Back in high school we had written in each other's year books that if we should both find ourselves single at 30 we'd just marry each other.
Time past and we lost contact until an email I received from him said that he had moved to Vegas to start over. Our contact become sporadic at its best and somewhat artificial - I guess we both seemed to have gotten lost in our own lives.
At 2:45 am this morning he left me a message to tell me he just married a dancer he'd been seeing for a while. "She loves me and I love her so we're gonna give it ago." He reminded me of our year book pack and he said that he regretted letting so much time lapse, "it should have been us". He said that he wished that he had had the strength then to let me see him broken. (we were gonna meet up in CA for a month long trip across country but he bail last minute without a trace.) If he only knew that there were times I felt the same way.
I do however, get to be the Godmother!
Friends may be few but when it's good it's forever.