When I was in my early 40s, I spent a lot of time with my parents as I was posted in my hometown, Lucknow for a few years. My Dad played the doting Grand-Dad to my two sons. He was the vibrant, cheerful septuagenarian, playing cricket with them and being their friend, story-teller and guide. Time moved on also I did to another posting. In my later interactions, there was a profound change in Dad’s disposition. He felt a sense of loss & inevitability. His friends of decades, were leaving having played their innings !
More than two decades later, we in our 70s are on the same cross roads. Old memories and friends matter much, as we see the world fleeting by & transforming with alacrity. Losing old friends, especially those who felt like family as we reconnected again, is a profound and often quiet form of grief that can feel as painful as a breakup. When old friends leave “forever”- it is a difficult transition that often involves losing witnesses to our life story. I understand now what Dad had felt then, as we face this cycle of life.
As professional bankers we were used to due dates and maturity being fixed & known in advance. But it doesn’t quite work like that in real life where only the birth date remains unchanged. Studies on the average human life span are holistic with no guarantees of individual performance. The Bard had profoundly said ‘Life is a Walking Shadow..’ to mean that human existence is brief, fleeting and lacks substance. Despite the experience we’ve gained, its tough to accept our fallibility and unpredictability of ‘what lies ahead’.
Having said that, there’s the resilient part of us that navigates the painful loss of friends realizing that sometimes friends and some loved ones are only meant to be part of your story, for a season, not the entire book. Write down good memories and lessons learned from the dear departed to honor the past while accepting that the present has changed. The goal is to reach a point where you can look back at the good times with the friends who left us with fondness, while appreciating our own life and those we have as of now.
Finally, here’s another thought – just as eagles fly alone, sometimes, being with yourself with your strong belief system means, you are meant to grow stronger on your own !
Working on Living 