ONE DAY, IF I’M LUCKY

One day, if I’m lucky, all my friends will be gone. 

Wait...what am I saying? Would that really be so lucky? Sure, I'd have lived the longest life, but…

I reflect on this now and then, like on a sultry summer night like this when I’m alone, deep in thought, sipping a nice tequila on the deck. Maybe it’s the booze, but in such moments I often yearn for that sweet, simple connection: calling to chat with a dear old friend. So I call. Usually, they answer.

             I hope there’s room left in the 
             loneliness for joy and gratitude.

Those chats nourish me, mind and spirit. They reaffirm who I’ve been, who I am, how lucky I am to be both alive and befriended so well. They also make quite clear how empty the former would be without the latter.

How fortunate I am to still have such friends!

But if I were indeed to be the last, I hope missing my old pals wouldn’t hurt too much. That there’s room left in the loneliness for joy and gratitude. That remem-
bering might feel just a bit like calling one of them from my deck. 

               

Living friends or not, I hope I’ll have kindled the kind of relationship with the rest of my world where that affection, too, might sustain me. That, for one thing, my companionship with Nature, with all her familiar ways, might feel like being with an old friend. Someone who cares, who shares their wisdom with me, who’s got my back. And, dare I wish it, laughs at my jokes.