This week Liz Dawes gets some news that makes her reflect on what friendship is really about……

Much has been said about this undoubted truth: that with age comes some of life’s greatest gifts.  We have lifelong friendships, loving families, a little wisdom, and maybe even that confidence to finally be ourselves.  We might idly covet a pert bottom or smooth skin, but we know what we really value the most.  It’s also true, though, that after a while things inevitably start to fray at the edges. Parents become frail, children fly the nest, and sometimes we are visited by profound illness.  With a full life come some tough battles, and no amount of knowing that can make them any less daunting.

And so it was this week that a much loved friend told us of her diagnosis.  A frightening illness, it is, thankfully, treatable.  But she is under no illusions that her fight will require the kind of gritty determination that I can only thank the heavens she happens to have.  Wise, funny and brave, if there is a woman out there who can kick the butt of this most cruel of diseases, it is surely her.

Shock, sadness, and a petulant sort of anger have followed me around ever since.  It’s not bloody fair.  She doesn’t deserve it.  This is just not right and I just won’t allow it.  Not now, not her.

Times like these require words we can’t seem to find and actions we don’t know how to take.  There is only the wholly inadequate “I’m so sorry” and the absurdly trite “What can I do?”  The idea that I might text her about my new hairdo or holiday seems too insensitive for words, and I don’t want to pop round for a drink or invite her to the cinema either: surely she has far better things to be doing at a time like this?

And this is what illness can do.  It might not steal our friend (nope, definitely still not allowing that), but it can have a bloody good go at stealing our friendship. We are so keen not to say or do the wrong thing, that we are in danger of not saying or doing anything at all, leaving the person isolated, and feeling as though it is their job to make us feel better.

We are saved from this danger, she and I, by her extraordinary generosity of spirit.  She has remembered to ask me about my life.  She has laughed at holiday snaps of my kids and invited me for drinks and yes even managed to comment on a new hairdo.  Because of her insistence that we are all still important to her, all her friends are able combine supporting her with carrying on with our lives, as she carries on with hers.  On the days when it’s just too hard, we simply pick her up and carry her along with us, where she belongs.

This is, I think, what really helps all of us, whenever we face something awful. Not hiding from your friend at a silent and respectful distance for fear that your day to day seems insignificant compared to what they face; but rather pulling them in closer, holding them tighter, sharing life all the more, and reminding them, and you, of what the friendship really means to you.

So, it will go on as it always has.  Until she is well, and then afterwards, into our long and happy old age.  That’s what friends are for.