In response to something I wrote, a friend wrote:

“An old Jewish belief is that the dead live as long as they are remembered…so remembering those we loved and who loved us recapitulates our history…and so telling the stories and remembering the faces is eternity for all of us. As I grow older, stories mean more and more to me, and I wonder if someone in the future will be telling my stories around the campfire.”

I’m thinking how much I love this lunk of a guy, and so, in the future of the next day getting all sentimental about our long distance friendship and getting a tear in my eye  and thinking I was writing something real buddy, buddy-like, I wrote, “I’ll tell stories about you and you can tell stories about me as we sit together around the campfire on the beach.”

He lives in San Antonio, Texas and I live along the shores of Lake Michigan.  It’s March.

So right away he wrote,  “Are you nuts?  It’s freezing cold up there.”

I, forgetting this was supposed to be a conversation about when we were dead just like my San Antonio buddy forgot, wrote,  “Well, with that kind of an attitude, it will be a cold day in hell before I sit around a campfire with you.”

I watched the weather report and it was going to be a really cold day and so I wrote, “I’m catching a flight down. Start gathering the wood.”

And we aren’t even dead yet but our memories are getting short and we’d better make hay while the sun shines at least in San Antonio, Texas in March which it almost never does in Michigan along the shores of the lake.

And so I wrote right away asking him to float me a loan for the ticket.

And all of a sudden he can’t even find the words to respond. I’m thinking he’s getting all sentimental and choking back the tears.

It’s now the middle of April and I still haven’t heard back from him.  That’s how choked up he is.

And that’s friendship, I guess. I love this guy.