Lost friendships

 

Lost friendships happen, for many reasons, and they are always hard, but they seem more poignant to me during pandemic. Maybe what I’m trying to say is they leave unanswered questions. This holiday season I reached out to three longtime friends—people that have at one point been a big part of my life but that I don’t see or hear from often. I have not had a response from any one of them, which leaves me wondering: have I somehow offended? Is this a matter of political differences? Did they or a family member succumb to COVID-19? Or old age?

One is an author who befriended me when I was young and green. She is several years older than me, lives in another state, and was having trouble with her eyesight. I sent a Jacquie Lawson Christmas card but never got that email that tells me she opened it. Another is an author who lives nearby but with whom I’ve lost touch, and I’m sad about it—we used to be great traveling buddies, going to various conferences in Texas. For a while there we had a dog-and-pony show—she talked about being a fifth-generation Texan, and I countered with a newcomer’s point of view. I know she’s been ill, with severe balance problems, and has a caretaker at least part time. Maybe she’s given up reading email?

Finally, there’s a woman, long divorced as I am (our husbands were colleagues), with whom I used to enjoy dinners. Somewhere along the line it developed that we had political differences, and she would chide me for bringing up my liberal views. Jordan had been particularly fond of her and worked to make her welcome in our home. Is she ignoring my email because of our political differences? Did her grandchildren, who live in her building if not her apartment, bring COVID home to her?

The problem of losing friends over the trump regime is real, and I have given up on one longtime friend who told me she and her husband voted for trump because “we had no other choice.” I almost exploded over the lunch table. I was so upset that she said, “I’m upset that you’re so upset.” And that was in 2017 before we knew how bad it would get. Occasionally we email, and she told someone blithely that we didn’t get together because her husband and I disagreed over politics. No, it’s not politics. It’s morals, honesty, kindness, justice, humanity. Later, her husband told her to tell me that Biden will take us to socialism which is the first step on the road to communism. I think he needs to study his “isms,” including fascism.

But I grieve over lost friends. They are a part of who I am today. Friendships have shaped me, and I’m uncertain what to do next. A phone call might be awkward, whether their silence is due to age or illness or politics. A repeat email may be fruitless, but I will try that. I want to know that these people are okay. And I wish for a world where these was less divisiveness.

Maybe I’m being judgmental. I hear in myself a voice that says it’s okay for me to cut off trump-supporting friends but it’s not okay for them not to respond to me. And maybe ultimately that self-contradictory place is where I am. I may well have become as zealous against trump policies as his followers are for them. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I for one am nervous about January 6.

But meantime, I’m going to email those people again. I want to be the one to reach out—and I want to know that they are okay.