My father's recent illness helped me restore connection with a cousin I was dear friends with as a child and got estranged with over the years. It was a slow drift and almost imperceptible at first. We were both young and busy with our own lives without much concern for keeping up with close relatives - there was a presumption that a cousin is a static fixture in the evolving landscape of life, there was no need to feed and care for things that were a given and unchanging.
In a couple of decades, the relationship had turned so awkward that we had no place to start chipping away at the ice. Every move felt stiff, formal and unnatural. This is not who we were, this is not the conversation we would have had in the times where talk flowed effortlessly between us. So we let more time pass and more freeze gather and settle unless it was an impenetrable wall of ice.
As my father recovers, I have been reaching out to people to help him along the way - mainly with recommendations for doctors who could offer him a second opinion. He does not trust the one who treated him. I was not there for the event so I follow his lead - if the doctor does not make him feel comfortable whatever the reason, then it is not a good fit and we need to keep looking until we find one that makes him feel safe.
I decided this was the time for me to reach out to C - the freeze, ice, awkwardness did not count. I wrote to him and he replied almost at once - it was such an amazing relief that our communication was restored. Does not matter the circumstances though one could wish they had been different. I am glad that we are chatting now - about my dad and doctors for the most part. Someday, the subject will change to other things. If we are both very lucky, we might restore our childhood friendship yet.
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