May is in full bloom here where I live. But right now, I feel a bit wintery. I just found out that a guy that I’ve known since 1967 is waiting for a biopsy on something that could be pretty darn serious. Yea, I know, this happens to thousands of people every day, but it’s still never easy. The guy wasn’t exactly my best friend; sometimes we were hardly friends at all. He was a little mean to me at times when I was a kid, although he could also be very generous. After I got thru college and grad school (he just managed to get thru high school), there were long spells when I totally lost track of him — and hardly regretted it. Yet somehow our paths kept on crossing every so many years or decades. And he even reached out to me unexpectedly a few years ago. So it finally struck me that I’m in my 50’s and he’s around 60 and life ain’t forever; so even if we don’t have everything in common and we’re very different in many ways, I should still return his calls, maybe even make some calls myself.

Anyway, I feel in the mood right now for cold and greyness, not flowers and sunshine. Actually, I’m probably worrying more about my own future than his. He’s the kind of guy that doesn’t break very easily. If his doctor tells him next week that he has cancer and needs an operation and chemo, that won’t stop him from working on his crazy plans (like going down to South America to marry a woman around half his age — it’s a long, long story). Disease will slow him, but it won’t stop him. Still, I want to offer my sympathies and tributes to anyone who reads this who is worrying or caring right now about someone else coping with a serious situation. Or it you’re going thru it yourself. Here’s my hope that nature’s metaphor of the cold, grey winter that turns into a beautiful spring applies somehow to our lives too. Let’s hope — let’s try to keep faith — that there’s more to it all than we see right now; just as I’m beginning to realize that there was (and still is) more to our friendship than I could see.