“Remember those not here today. And those unwell or faraway and every friend who has passed our way. Remember as though it were yesterday, to our absent friends, let’s drink a toast.”

I remember during the Christmas season how my parents would always raise a toast to ‘Absent Friends’. It was not a passing moment either, they would both privately linger obviously thinking back and remembering. Their’s was the generation that had fought a war and had lost friends and family in that conflict. I joined them of course but I didn’t get it, not really. How could I? I was a callow teenager. I had no absent friends. My parents ‘absent friends’ were overseas or had died or were faraway at least, truly absent from their lives. I could always feel their sadness in the room. It seems life needs to serve up some loss before one can truly understand what a toast to ‘absent friends’ is really about. And so here I am. Now I know better, now when I toast ‘absent friends’ it is second only to my family.

Before I go any further, I’m thinking it might help to introduce my friend in the photo. She is Darlene Weston, my wife Mac’s great friend. They have been seeing each other through Life, thick as thieves, since the age of five. But that is not why I asked her permission to use her image. Darlene is my friend as well, running true through the decades of our own friendship, steadfast through thick and thin. Darlene for me is what friendship looks like. She is for me, the face of friendship. And this is about friends, Absent Friends.

I have never been more sentimental in my life and I’m not quite sure why? It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a thing, a new thing and it has me reflecting. And then well, there is this time of year of course. I do know that I have become more sentimental as I have aged and that must have something to do with it. The reasons matter not though. The fact is it is New Years 2024 and I’m feeling sentimental.

So. here’s to ‘Absent Friends’.

I can’t name you all, so be not offended if yours doesn’t pop up, you know that you are included.

Lori and Burt, Jodi and ‘Stand Up’, Butler, Debbie with Two B’s and Terry, my BFF,FN (My Best Friend Forever, For Now), Dianne with Two N’s and Dave, Mary and Bob, Pat and Harold, Trish and Guy each one of whom has welcomed us to our new life on Vancouver Island. I know my wife Mac was an obvious plus but I also understand what an acquired taste is and I would be all of that. You have all made our lives richer for your friendship.

We returned to Kelowna not so long ago where we had raised our family and lived for many decades. We spent two days there, just long enough to be reminded how rich our lives were in the Okanagan Valley; Jan and Garry, Irene G., Bruce and Kathy, Chris and Wanda and others. Then we spent one special evening with Rose and Bernie and Darlene and Paul, great friends with whom we have shared so much, beginning our visit as though we had never been apart, picking up exactly where we had left off. And I was warmed once again by the memory of my great friend David Larsen with whom I spent so many great years.

And while not an ‘Absent Friend’ the year must not pass without a toast to my cousin Adam Rowe (more accurately my first cousin once removed), stopping this year through Nanaimo en route to Santa Barbara, California for his schooling at UC Santa Barbara. Of course one doesn’t pass through Nanaimo en route to Santa Barbara, one makes a rather inconvenient detour to visit a cousin, some fifty years older whom one has never met and who happens to live in Nanaimo BC. It is akin to going to school in say Austin, Texas and popping up to Idaho to visit a cousin one had never met. And through that visit we have forged a connection with Adam’s mum and dad, my cousin David Rowe with whom I last spoke nearly thirty years ago and his partner Eva Pascoe, a more engaging woman one is unlikely to run across. And into our lives they bounce. Thank you Adam.

And finally, a nod to my two new friends from the Departure Bay Dog Park, a dog park in Nanaimo. We all take our dogs there to you know, socialize, them. So what if I get to spend time with my new dog park friends Mo and Dan. A man my age sitting by himself at a dog park is just that, it’s all a wee bit sad. Then again a man my age sitting on a bench with a couple of crusty old buggers, our faces etched with the stories of our lives, laughing heartily at one another’s tall tales, getting each others jokes, now that is just a gift. A fast friendship it may be but at my age I’m good with anything fast. Time after all is not in over supply.

As for all the rest of you, absent or not.

May the sun shine warm upon your faces

May the wind be always at your back

And may your family and your friends hold you safe in the cup of their hands.

To absent friends.

Happy New Year.