Friends will be friends...

It was suggested to me a day or so ago that I should actually get my butt into gear and write something on my blog, as it's been a while since I had anything at all to say. The thing is though that I haven't really had either the motivation or the 'va va voom' to write anything of late. Life has gone from feeling just a bit of a drudge to being downright terrifying at times recently and nowhere in all of the chaos have I felt the inclination to write anything.

Then today I suddenly got the urge. You see, the thing that really makes me want to write is, more often that not, having an overwhelming feeling, one that I am struggling to try to explain, even to myself. A feeling that I am aware of deep in my gut but that I can't translate into any kind of tangible form. The most frustrating time that that has happened in recent years was when I first met Jeff and was struggling to say what it was that his friendship had brought into my life. That resulted in me writing my 'Snow is snow..' piece, which I remember I first read to Jeff over the phone when he was in Fort William in Scotland.

I guess it's no real surprise then that it is Jeff and his remarkable, unique and precious friendship that has once again got me scrambling around looking for words that will in some small measure allow me to put into written form what I feel in my heart. He guessed today that he means approximately '$4.50' to me and therefore seemed rather pleased when I told him that his true value is nearer to $6 or even (on good days) $7. He really doesn't seem to have the vaguest idea how he touches my life and the lives of many others.

Jeff and I have a relationship that many may describe as 'volatile' as no more than a week ever seems to go by without us ending up in a very heated (and occsionally rather vicious!) debate about something or other to do with politics, the economy, global warming or any other issue that we can goad each other into arguing about. We have done it in person (I particularly remember an occasion in London and also one in a dentist's office in Salem where I swear that anybody listening to us would believe that we hate each other), via his blog (most recently over the way the rest of the world views the USA), on the phone and also by instant message but it never gets to a point where either of us ever take it too personally. Arguing is just what we do..and we love it and thrive on it.

However, the standout feature of our relationship for me is the fact that in Jeff I have a friend in whom I can place total trust and who I know will never, ever let me down or betray me in any way. He will never be anything other than brutally honest with me either and would not dream of ever diluting what he felt he needed to say to save my feelings, when his ultimate aim is the protection of me and my well-being. He will tell me things the way they are, tell me what he thinks I should do and then just stand back and let me make my mistakes, safe in the knowledge that he will always, always be there to pick me up and start to fix me when it all falls apart. I know he must long to throw an 'I told you so' into the mix but so far he has always resisted what must be a rather over-whelming urge, given how many times I seem to carry on 'poking my finger into a live electric socket' regardless of how much it hurt the previous time. I know how very, very frustrating I can be to care for at times!!

Last night I was having a terrible time and from 2am onwards just wanted somebody to be there to talk to, to cry to and to just generally make me feel slightly less lost and alone and, as always, Jeff stood up to the plate. There were no meaningless platitudes, no cliches and, as I've already said, no wise words even vaguely approaching a 'you should have listened to me in the first place'. All there was was a 'constant' on the end of either the phone (and boy how he hates the phone...especially I imagine when a distraught woman in tears calls in the middle of her night!) or an instant message, a true, real and loyal friend who firmly held my hand across a rather large continent and an ocean and who made a long, dark and stressful night pass with the feeling of a safe pair of arms around me. Come the next day, he was still there chatting to me until he exhaustedly told me that it was 4am over there and that he really should get some sleep.

Sometimes it is easy to allow our dearest friends to become 'part of the furniture' and a fixture and fitting in our lives and it isn't until they truly step up to the plate for us that we once again truly appreciate what a difference they make to our lives. I often tell Jeff what he means to me and how I can't ever imagine not having him in my life but he just seems to think that that makes me rather weird. Maybe it does but if being weird equals having a Jeff constantly there in any way I need him, then bring it on. I just hope beyond hope that I am even half the friend to him that he is to me and that I can make just a fraction of the impact on his happiness that he does on mine.

The song below has been on my mind all day and I would like to dedicate it to Bert. With much love and appreciation for the most remarkable of friendships, from Mary :)