“Gerard was incapable of ‘cutting’ someone he knew, had in this instance known so long; as one grows older the fact of having known someone ‘all one’s life’ becomes more important.”
This is what the late British writer Iris Murdoch says of a leading character in her fascinating novel, The Book and the Brotherhood, a recent selection of my reading group, well-received by all our members. I was struck by the writer’s observation because it accords so well with my own experience and, I suspect, the experience of many other people who have reached a certain age.
Actually, the phrase “becomes more important” strikes me as something of an understatement. For me, friends of long standing have become a vital source marking both continuity and discontinuity in my life.
The two Bobs, Frank, and Jack and I have been close friends since the first year of high school. Though the vicissitudes of life have carried us in different directions, the bonds among us have never snapped. Knowing one another for fifty years has been the source of much value and continues to feed our souls.
That we are all men, that I do not count among friends of such long standing any women, derives from the exclusively male environment in which I received schooling as an adolescent. More than half a century after its founding, our school still has not admitted girls.
I could discourse here on the virtues of each friend but that might embarrass them. It will suffice to say that each of them has special qualities of personality that have worn well through so many years.
Despite living in the same region, some of us do not see one another very often. But we turn out for major occasions: weddings, parental funerals, retirement celebrations, and other special events. With Jack, I celebrate Christmas Eve and his birthday every year; with one of the Bobs, I have dinner most weeks.
But, even when we do not see each other, we still hold one another close. We share so many formative experiences over which we reminisce and often laugh. Our salad days seem far removed now but some of us are enjoying dessert. Two of us are very late marriers and still have young children to fascinate us. Two others have grandchildren by now whose arrivals give them hope for their family future.
One of the Bobs, by reason of his vocation as priest, lives a celibate life of service to the people of his parish and the church at large. The rest of us look to him for spiritual inspiration, liturgical celebration at joyful times, and support during crises.
Like everybody else, we as a group have had to bear such times. Various bodily ailments continue to test the courage of these friends. The worst affliction has come to the spouse of one of us, a disease mysterious in its origins and devastating in its effects. We friends suffer with this woman whom we have known for decades as we wish her husband strength and wisdom.
I go beyond the Iris Murdoch character Gerald because, not only would I not reject an old friend but I would not criticize him either. The longevity of friendship counts enough with me that a personal statute of limitations has taken effect. Respect and affection for these friends demands that by this point in time I affirm them and cannot feel justified in ever badmouthing them.
We came from a society much more stable than American society is now. Though no one of us conformed completely to type, we were products of the Greater Boston, Irish-Catholic community. The church loomed very large in our personal development; so did family. Though some of us joined in the rebellions of the 1960s and 1970s, we have never renounced charter membership in the solidly middle class echelon of America.
We all speak the same cultural language, a fact that has made communication among us easy. So far as I know, members of this informal group have never had a personal falling-out or an ongoing dispute. The five of us differ, no doubt, about many subjects but not enough to cause estrangement.
I asked each of my four friends to tell me their feelings about the sweep of personal history that has been ours. The most touching came from Frank who told me: “One of the things that we have been able to do is know one another well enough to wish it would go on forever.”
One of the Bobs calls long friendships “a great consolation to me that there is a significant number of people that I have known all my life; I find it absolutely unique in a mobile society, that there are people whom you don’t have to introduce herself to. With them, you don’t have to start up again.”
Richard Griffin