This particular song by Bon Jovi has been a favourite of mine for many years now. When I listen to it, I cast my mind back to my mid to late teens and I remember my friends, the music that we all enjoyed, my first love and all the fun we had together as a group.
When you’re that age you believe that you will live forever and that nothing will change. You don’t want to grow up, in some ways. You are young, and beautiful, and indestructible. The future is so bright that you’ve got to wear shades.
Life isn’t like that though, is it. We all have to grow and move on. Our tastes in music or fashion change, friendships fade, people become immersed in work. Suddenly our priorities are different to those of our old peers. You and your first love break up and you think you will never love again – but you do.
Some of your friends even die. Quite a number of my friends have had to say goodbye over the years – including my best friend of seventeen years who died from a brain tumour in 2008, aged just thirty-seven. Let me tell you; visiting the friend who has seen you through divorce, homelessness, depression and more and holding them for what you know to be the last time… it’s heartbreaking.
However, over the years I have never said goodbye. I hold on to the wonderful memories from all those years ago.
I may be a very different person now, but I will never say goodbye to the memories that I love.
I agree. Reading about your friend was difficult, but the way your describe handling it was moving and encouraging. You have such a wonderful attitude. I’m glad we’re in touch.
Lee was the big brother I never had; a wonderful man by anybody’s standards, who could take tears of utter desperation and quickly turn them into laughter. We once had an entire bar stood up singing along to “Sweet Child O’ Mine” on the jukebox (he loved Guns N’ Roses as much as I do) and if somebody spotted one of us they knew that the other wasn’t far behind.
Due to distance I couldn’t attend his funeral, but I emailed a few words to his father, who liked what I had to say so much that he asked the minister to read it out.
You hold on to them as hard as you can, I have the same attitude and I am still 21yrs inside my head!
I firmly believe that the past shapes your present and future, and that includes memories. If they’re worth holding on to, then never let go
I can’t imagine losing my best friend. I don’t even want to think about it.
It’s something that I would never wish on anybody.
I have gotten into the practice of letting some of the elderly people I grew up with or parents of friends… people who had a bearing on me in my young life, know how they helped me through difficult years. Recently, I received an email from the daughter of an elderly friend, who found a letter I had written to her mother some years back, thanking her for the positive influence she had in my life. Her mother had kept the letter in a jewelry box. The daughter found it after her mother passed away. I was so happy that she treasured the letter. I also remember the letter one of my grandmother’s students wrote to her years before, thanking her for insisting and encouraging he stay in school. He followed her advice, and was thankful for her urging. We found this young man’s letter in Grandma’s belongings. We need to let people know they had bearing on us, that they meant something to us… that they made us feel loved. What greater gift than to know you helped someone by being their friend?
My thank you to Lee was allowing him to see me settled and happy for the first time since we’d known each other. He and Dom met and wholeheartedly approved of each other. With my Nan I made certain that she knew I appreciated all she’d done for me by staying in regular touch, meeting up for lunches and, as she became too frail to leave the house, sending regular bunches of flowers. She and I were always very close.
I always made a point of walking up to my old school teachers to say hello, and was very sad on a visit back home in the summer to learn that my favourite English teacher had passed away. Another teacher who everybody in school knew because he was so nice developed Alzheimers and came to live at the nursing home I used to work at. He won’t ever recall that I once saved his life, but his wife and son both know my name and face and tracked me down to say thank you. It’s my hope that he never remembered an incident which was, by nature, quite dangerous to all concerned.