Good bye my friend

Hello Hello Silver Bloggers and everyone else hello!

This has been an eventful week in so many ways.

But it was something that I received in the post this morning that made me decide to write about friendships and in particular the end of a friendship.

What really is a friend

That is a good question which I think has become more fluid with time, both in terms of the year and our age.

I know I had lots more friends when I was younger but were they really friends.

I think the friends and best friends have got intertwined or mixed, people we like to hang out with regularly are best friends but in reality I think they are friends, and friends we don't really have alot of.

You know, the friend who would drop everything and come running if you need help.

The sort who would beg borrow oe steal to help you financially if you were in a jam.

The ones who share their projects and ambitions and want you on their journey.

The sort who thinks of you and not their self self self all the time.

Those friends we only have a handful of and they are what I class as my friends.

The rest are people, colleagues, acquaintances even people we meet online or in Hive for example.

Good people for sure, but for me never in that best friend category.

My eureka friendship evaluation moment today

At the end of July Mrs T's sister who lives in America lost her husband who passed away unexpectedly, to say it was a shock is an understatement.

As some of you may know it was my birthday almost two weeks ago.

So today I received a birthday card in the mail (post) from her.

It cut me to pieces.

To think she is grieving her husband but yet she went out and not only bought a card, went to the post office and mailed it.

What a selfless act, not only was I speechless but I was close to tears, which for me is fluffing unusual.

How many of our friends would actually do that?

Not many, hence my definition of friends / best friends.

The end of a friendship

Going to boarding school you got to develop friendships very quickly. It was also a case of survival of the fittest!

It was where I had my first taste of death when one of our Gang of Six in our dorm was killed whilst on a holiday back home in Africa.

At that age friends come and go and I guess all through our teens they do the same.

I studied Chemical Engineering in Wales but after the first year I transferred to Edinburgh for the last two years.

It was there I met a wonderful friend. He was studying Computer Science. He was a nutter to my nuttiness in other ways.

We shared a flat together for a term, and then when the landlord sold we had to move again.

He found a flat share in Elm Row off Leith Walk in Edinbugh.

This was when Edinburgh was the junkie (heroin) capital of the world.

Our flatmates were heroin addicts. Fluff me was it hard passing uni that term. I like to party far too much and if it was not for him pulling me back by the coattails I would have been there with them at nine in the morning drink pints of neat vodka before they injected themselves in the afternoon.

We moved to gentile Morningside where JK Rowling lived. We partied, I was Uncle Ed and sorted his love life. He taught me karate and what a gym was!

I was a team sports player so all this individual stuff was well odd!

For those two years we were besties I guess you could say!

Ironically his parents lived in a street only five minutes from where I live now in a different town to where we went to uni.

We graduated and went oour separate ways. Me via London and then Africa, him into the Navy and then as a North Sea Oil platform helicopter pilot.

One year Scotland had qualified for a World Cup. That was massive and I was going and had gone him tickets too.

Unlike me the massive football fan he could not give a shit about footy but he was Scottish and wanted to go.

I got time off, his was refused.

So when we were watching Scotland get humped by some team. he was piloting a helicopter to a North Sea platform, a big Shell one I think.

Long story short it was foggy weather and the crane had not been stowed properly so a boom was over the helideck.

Neither Chris my friend or the pilot realised what happened the net result was the helicopter crashed and fell into the sea with all lives lost.

How cruel a way to end a friendship.

What was worse for his parents was the media trying to accuse him as he was a copilot and was flying.

The inquest exonerated him but try telling that to any families who lost relatives.

I leave this as it is the front garden of his parents old house.

RIP Chris and yes an end to a special friendship that I will never forget.

Thanks for visiting

This was written for Memoir Monday #25 (8/26-9/1) - Have you ever lost a friendship that meant a lot to you? from @ericvancewalton and his excellent Memoir Monday initiative that has me opening up like never before.