Inherited misdeeds

Once upon a time I had a best friend named John. We were high school freshmen when we met, and at first it was our common taste in music and similar sense of humor that formed the basis of our friendship. As it turned out, though, we both had a philosophical bent, and so we often had the kind of conversations that form a lasting bond. We were equally happy drinking at parties after heavy metal concerts and talking about the nature of human relationships, which by most people's standards is an uncommon combination.

For a while, in the latter years of high school, we drifted apart. The fundamental reason was the mutually obsessive relationship that my ex and I had at the time, which led us to exclude spending time with almost anyone else. John saw (rightly so, as it turned out) that this was unhealthy, and tried to warn me off of the path I was on, but I took the side of teenage love, and we barely spoke for a couple of years.

In college we reconnected, and although he soon moved off to far-off places like Idaho and Wisconsin, we kept in touch. To me, the mark of a truly great friendship is the ability to pick up again exactly where you left off, regardless of how much time has passed since you've last seen each other, and that was true in our case. Each time we got together, we would have thoughtful conversations, trading recommendations for books, music, and plans for the future. We both got married, and the four of us got along well together.

During difficult times, John was always a source of sage advice. He would lend an ear that was at once sympathetic and analytical, helping to push through into the heart of any problem. A few years into our marriage, my ex announced that she had fallen in love with a coworker, and admitted to having an affair with him. To this day I can remember sitting with John during one of his visits, talking until the wee hours of the morning about the whole situation, as he questioned both of us..."what do you really want, and what are you willing to give up?" It's no understatement to say that without him, our marriage might have ended much earlier than it did.

Eventually, though, it did end. Maybe it was inevitable, once those first cracks began to show, causing us both to take a long look at who we were and what we wanted out of life. It was a tumultuous time, the culmination of a long series of missteps and bad judgment. For a time it seemed that everything would end amicably, but as is often the case, things changed, and bitterness took hold. It's a time that I look back on now with many regrets, but not the least of them is the fact that John and I ended up separating, too.

In divorce, the friends are sometimes divided up along with the belongings, and in this case, John's wife's sympathies were clearly in Stacey's direction. Whether John's were as well isn't entirely clear to me, but the damage had been done, the dynamic changed. I refused to go on a campaign to tell my side of the story, opting instead to stay in touch with the handful of friends who required no explanation.

Seven years have passed now, and I only have the vaguest idea of where John is today and what his life has brought him since then. Last night I spent a couple of hours searching the net, trying to tease some contact information out of the sea of people with the same name, with no luck.

This evening I read a line in a book by Neil Gaiman:

"If it's true that every seven years each cell in your body dies and is replaced, then I have truly inherited my life from a dead man, and the misdeeds of those times have been forgiven and are buried with his bones."

My seven years are almost past, and the man who committed those mistakes long ago is nearly gone. There are apologies I would make before he goes, but I think the time for them is probably long past, and they would fall on deaf ears. Still, it would be nice to think that the dying man's last act would be to reach out to a long-lost friend again, leaving a new friendship as his inheritance. I suppose there's always hope.