I meant to write this column last week but for once, when I sat down at the computer my mind was a total blank. No subject came to me. There were plenty of local crises – zoning quarrels and contests, drug convictions, obituaries of strangers, plays I’m not going to see – but nothing inspired me to comment. So I left the computer and decided to skip this month – a very different decision.
Then this morning, reading the obituaries, I found a name that popped out at me – an old friend I had not seen or heard from since my 90th birthday, when he had called long distance to say, “Listen, Harriett. My mother has friends who are 90 – I don’t! How did you get to be 90?” My friend and colleague Lenny Lipton, who himself was only 84 at the time, was as struck by my aging as I was this morning by his death. I first met Lenny when I returned to college at 40 to become a psychologist, a field he worked in and was kind enough to help me become a professional in. He and his friend, Chuck Elton, who 30 years later became my second husband, met me on Tuesday to teach me the ropes. In the course of things, we became dear friends who stood by each other through his tragic loss of his teenage daughter, the death of his first wife, the mistake of his second marriage, the death of my first husband and death of my elder son.
Could there be sharing, caring friends who lived through more tragedies together? But then, Lenny moved to Florida, Chuck and I were married, and we saw each other only occasionally, when he returned here. That didn’t mean our caring ceased; we just didn’t communicate any more.
This morning after the mortal pang of his obituary, I called my cousin, Lenny’s close friend, only to find that he knew as little as I did. We will go to his graveside service, if only to mourn for the years we did not share. The obituary was written by him, obviously – no one would have known the details of his professional life and the contributions he made to his profession.
What a shame that distance and time cheat us of time together. I’ve taken other friends to their graves, and I know that the new friends I’ve made will probably take me to mine, but I am fresh out of old friends – I’ve outlived almost all of them. I’m luckier than most my age – I can still think, and I have good help and enough money, but don’t mourn me if some morning I don’t wake up! Just say, “She was a great old gal, she had a great life, and this is what she wanted!”