Friends Are Like Computers [9-24-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—Friends Are Like Computers [9-24-23]

 

I was deep into chemotherapy and very much under the cloud of the pale oncologist’s prediction of “a year or two.” So I was delighted when I read in the newspaper [remember those] that Ed had been called as the pastor of a large church in the city where I had my chemo treatments.

We had been good friends while doing PhD work. We were pastors in different denominations, but we had a lot in common. We were among the older students in the School of Religion-- mid 30s, married, two grade school daughters. We hung around together, visited in each other’s homes for meals, so our daughters could play with one another. Helen and Nancy liked each other. When Ed had to have a surgery, I went to see him the in the hospital the night before. He said, ‘I was hoping you’d come.” It was that kind of relationship.

When we left Iowa City, though, we went to different states. No email or cell phones then. Our letters dwindled down to Christmas cards. Then I learned that he was only thirty miles away. He had been called to a pastorate in my chemo city.

I called him up to see if we could have lunch together some day after one of my chemo treatments. He was very distant. Very busy, he said. But I really wanted to see him. I kept suggesting other dates. He finally agreed to one.

I didn’t want to lay too much on him too quickly, and I didn’t have the chance. He started the conversation with complaints about the president of his new congregation. And continued that way. When I got a turn, I told him that I had cancer and the oncologist had said I might die soon, which was going to leave Helen and my girls…

He hardly acknowledged. Something like, “That’s too bad.” Then right back to his problems in his congregation.

He stayed in that congregation for a long time, so I guess he worked out something with his president. But I never heard from him again.

Friends are like computers. My first computer guru, Ben Friedman, always said, “It’s not if your computer will crash; it’s only when.” The same is true with friends. It’s not if they will disappoint you, only when.

I’ve written about Ed before, but I spent some time with him again this morning, because I knew that in my heart, I had not really forgiven him for ignoring my pain when I needed his friendship. I assume it wasn’t personal, just the kind of distraction that leads to self-absorption.

But we’re all like that as friends. We never measure up to the expectations of friends because we don’t know what they are. We have to be the best friend we can be, and accept the reality that no friend, including us, is perfect, and accept the forgiveness that comes when we fail, even if we don’t know about it.

John Robert McFarland