A significant challenge of aging well and living long means having to say goodbye to those long term friends who go before you. 

I’m watching someone close to me struggle with possibly having to say goodbye to a long term friend of hers. I say possibly because there is a sincere hope that he is wrong in predicting his own end of days.

This man has been a stalwart support to my sister for decades. He has helped her through innumerable situations and complications. Even as recently as last month he provided valuable advice and assistance. He has been there through the ups and downs of her life as a single parent, a grieving widow, and well, I can’t go on without violating her privacy, but you get the picture. He’s been a fan, a friend, an admirer, a ‘ride or die’ for her for over forty years.

And now, the tables have turned. He has had health issues in the recent past, but this time …this time he thinks he might not make it home again. He needs a friend and she has stepped up to the plate in the same way he would have for her. She has been putting plans in place, getting access to house and pin numbers, holding his hand; all those end of life details and intimacies a close friend does when there is no immediate family or capable spouse. These are the things he would have done for her.

It’s hard to say goodbye after so many years. He was an ‘always there’ sort of friend to her. It hurts me to think of him gone and he’s only ever been my friend by proxy.  

She has described him as a ‘hard smokin’, hard drinking bad boy’. But he always showed up. Should he rally, it would be characteristic of him to join her in a toast to himself. Here’s hoping.

Harold was the inspiration for one of my characters in the comic Contentment is for Cows. He had a starring role in chapter nine, In Art Pursuit, in which he bails Bella out from an entangled situation. This is fiction mind, grossly exaggerated for comic effect, but in real life, Harold’s steadfast support for her has been inspiring in itself.

There will be no post next weekend for the Easter break.

Stay safe everyone.

Anne Milne is an every Sunday blogger, unless it’s a holiday weekend. Or summertime. Facebook or email.