Good friends are like stars. You don’t always see them, but you know they’re always there. Unknown
My friend Bruce died last Tuesday. I heard that his passing was peaceful. I know without asking that his beloved life partner and their two daughters were there to walk him all the way home.
I met Bruce 45 years ago during our freshman year at Stanford in Italian class. We progressed through the curriculum together and wound up in Florence for two quarters of our junior year. We traveled in packs in those days, gathering in ever-changing small groups on Friday afternoons to put a finger on the map and choose our destination for the weekend. With only 60 of us living in the Villa il Salviatino, we got close quickly, navigating heartbreak and homesickness while finding ways to make each other laugh. I didn’t travel with Bruce every weekend but when we did, it wasn’t unusual for him to be one of two guys traveling with our group of young women.
Bruce and I stayed connected through grad school, moves to other states and countries, and families created and raised on both sides of the country. We kept track of each other’s relationships and sent congratulations as we each had children. We got together infrequently but never failed to pick up right where we had left off, no matter how much time had gone by. After Jimmy’s cancer diagnosis, Bruce donated every year to Jimmy’s LIVESTRONG fundraising campaigns and cheered his hard-won acceptance to Stanford. He often responded to the mass updates about Jimmy’s health that I sent to family and friends, saying at the end of my favorite of his notes simply “We are with you.”
We saw each other at every five-year college reunion except for our 30th which I missed for a LIVESTRONG event. At our 40th last fall, Dan and I couldn’t get to the reunion until mid-afternoon. By the time we arrived on campus, Bruce had already left. Unbeknownst to me, he’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few months earlier, and it had taken every bit of his energy to attend a lecture and the class luncheon. He was too exhausted the next day to come back to campus for the football game and tailgate.
In the months that followed, we stayed in more frequent contact than we had been in the past. We tried to get together during what remained of the fall football season but never pulled it off. Rain and chilly weather kept Bruce at home. I volunteered to drive to his house, but his limited energy was reserved for visits from family and his dearest friends. When we last exchanged emails, Bruce was in good spirits – back in treatment and finding the cocktail easier to manage than his original chemotherapy protocol. He was eating more, gaining weight and feeling better.
Two days before he died, I learned that Bruce had stopped treatment a few weeks earlier and had been given only a few months to live. I wrote to him the next day, only to learn from a mutual friend that his phone was on ‘do not disturb.’ I wish I had written sooner. I wish I had known I’d never have another chance. I wish my note had arrived in time.
I spent an afternoon this week looking through all the photos from our time together in Italy, crying and laughing out loud. Bruce holding up the leaning tower in Pisa. Modeling a multi-colored fur coat in a small, dusty shop near Osias Lukas monastery in Greece. Pretending to kiss a pig in the back of truck parked at the farmer’s market. Eating gelato at Perche No! on our last day in Florence. Riding a moped in Crete. In every image, he is smiling. In many, he is laughing. The moment I see one of these images, memories of Bruce come flooding back, and I remember how much fun we had together.
Bruce and I never discussed how much our connection meant to each of us. I think it would have made him feel awkward if I’d tried. The emails he wrote about Jimmy were Bruce at his most open. It’s not hard to tell how dearly he loved his own daughters given the way he wrote about my son. The fact that we didn’t see each other often doesn’t diminish the role he played in my life or my sadness over his death. Sixty-three years may not be a small amount of time, but it doesn’t feel like enough for someone whose life has been braided through mine for more than 40 years.
Bruce was one of the good ones. Wherever he is, I know he’s reunited with his parents and the other family members and dear friends who went before him. Jimmy’s there, too, I think. They’re cracking each other up and commiserating about just how awful our football team is this year.
We measure our closest friendships using metrics like how much we know about each other’s days or how often we speak. But the friendships we make at a memorable age, in a particular place or during a time long past are harder to calibrate. We expect each other’s lives to remain on a predictable path in between catch-up calls, only to find that circumstances have changed, sometimes in the hardest of ways. These treasured humans that we’re fortunate enough to know, the ones who will pick up the phone whenever we call or spend hours swapping stories about life before kids matter deeply. We just don’t always realize how much until they’re no longer there.
This past week, when taking Lucy out for the last time before bed, I looked up at the stars and sent my love to Bruce. Just like the little prince in St. Exupery’s famous story, I know he is on one of them laughing. I tell my sweet friend how much he has meant to me all these years. I thank him for being such an important part of my life, and I tell him how grateful I am that he made me part of his.
