I’m rocking with my friend, Becca*.

By “rocking” I don’t mean ‘girls gone wild’.

What we’re doing is a more satisfying (and maybe age-revealing?) undertaking at this early morning hour: sitting in rocking chairs on my front porch.

We face east. The dawning sun is a piece of melting orange crush candy as it peaks down on the earth, just above the horizon.

Beneath the rays a layer of fog hovers low in the meadow.

The view is mesmerizing.

Hypnotic.

Being a fiction writer, I imagine all sorts of phenomena emerging from that misty meadow. (Writers are weird like that.) I envision:

Zombies.

Ragtag Civil War soldiers.

Lost pets… or am I the only one who cries when I watch Lassie, Come Home?

Mutant creatures tainted from chemtrails or spills from train derailments which we’ve been assured can’t happen. (Ahem.)

Anyway, I’m always looking, waiting for what might materialize.

Not Becca. She’s looking for something more meaningful. Something poignant.

She’s looking for a memory.

“That meadow,” she says, “always reminds me of the one Dave and I used to look at. At our place.”

Used to look at because Dave passed away six years ago.

After his death, she made a rash decision to build a shed on their Alabama estate to block the view.

She finishes with another sigh, this one resembling the telltale sound of the lonely.

I expected this. Each time she visits, we do the same thing.

Sometimes I think she treks across Alabama and Georgia just to stare at this view.

And that’s okay. If I can give her a memory, a moment with the man she called “the love of my life,” I’ll do it.

That’s what friends do. The Book of Proverbs teaches that: “Just as lotions and fragrance give sensual delight, a sweet friendship refreshes the soul.” (Proverbs 27:9)

Becca is a unique lady.

She raises miniature goats and lots of feathered friends: ducks, chicken, geese, guineas. She loves oysters and the color yellow. Her favorite song is “Under the Boardwalk.”

She seems content with her memory for a bit. I excuse myself to give her that time. I go inside, hug Joe, and pour us all a cup of tea.

Dave used to bring her tea when they watched the rising sun at their farm.

Unfortunately, he died the long, slow, terrible kind of death: from cancer.

But I know that, in general, Becca will be fine. She is doing aloneness and retirement the right way.

She stays busy.

She keeps a camper parked near the beach, outside Pensacola. She owns two Airbnbs. When she can, she’s on the go, visiting friends, neighbors, her three sons and their grown children, from Tennessee to Florida. Also, a beloved cousin in Colorado and a sister in Alaska.

Becca is proof that no matter what your age, it’s important to have your own interests. Hobbies. Friends.

When Dave died, Becca had to close that chapter in the book of her life. Dave will only hereafter ever be a memory.

As a novelist I know that each chapter in a book—and metaphorically, in life— leaves something behind.

However, the best books involve each new chapter—in books and in life—being better than the last. Each must present new action (or characters, setting, obstacles, intensity) that carries the story along and makes it compelling.

Worth reading.

Worth living.

It’s that newness that Becca is exploring these days. But, for a moment, she’s seeking a memory.

My task, as a friend, is merely to encourage and support her.

We have another friend. I’ll call him Greg*.

He likes to drop by now and then to sit on our porch and drink a beer. We keep beer just for him.

Like Becca, he stares into the same meadow, but in the evening, when it’s drenched by the rays from a setting sun.

He’s looking for a memory, too.

His early chapters include a young man who traveled the rodeo circuit. Greg rode bucking broncs, each time hoping to achieve that necessary eight seconds on the clock. He collected prizes and injuries.

But rodeoing is a young man’s sport. After years of the jerking and twisting, his body betrayed him. He’s semi-retired now. Doing odd jobs. He’s developed an expertise in building fences.

In the sun-drenched, human-free vista of our landscape, he can again see that young wild and crazy guy he once was.

Like Becca, Greg has moved on too. He has his work, a loving family, a wide circle of friends that respect him, and a positive outlook that most people envy.

His new chapters might not be filled with intense suspenseful plot twists, but they’re filled with enough newness and opportunity to still create a compelling—and different—story.

So, what do we do with people like Becca and Greg?

We learn from them: Keep going strong, fulfilling our reason for being here on this Earth.

And, we love them: Be the best friend we can, because they need us and we need them.

The Telegraph, a publication from the UK, recently published an article discussing what researchers have found about the age-friend connection.

Turns out, “Socializing every day with your chums in later life more than halves the risk of death within five years…” the article said.

Does socializing with family count? Of course, it helps. However, spouses can tend to isolate together and get stuck in routines, limiting the newness and anticipation of the unknown, according to the data.

Not socializing with friends in particular, it says, increases activity in genes which produces inflammation in the body.

And we all know, inflammation is never good.

Remember that verse from Proverbs, mentioned above?

The next verse, (v. 10), may surprise you: “Don’t leave your friends or your parents’ friends and run home to your family when things get rough; better a nearby friend than a distant family.”

So, friends carry a rather high and dear place in that book of wisdom.

That alone is reason enough to value Becca and Greg.

It’s said that true friends stab you in the front.

What could be sweeter than that?

 

*Names have been changed to protect and respect privacy.

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