Today Is My Best Friend’s 40th Birthday

Today is my best friend’s 40th birthday. I’ll not launch into a massive accounting of why Rod is my best friend, as many of the reasons are ones that remain between he and I alone, and that are, in truth, almost impossible to explain. We have, over the last two years, traveled the paths of loss and death and the limits of sanity together, and through it all have somehow been able to retain some semblance of humour. In many ways, when we are together, our ability to laugh as much as we do perplexes me sometimes given everything that’s transpired, but I’d not exchange it for anything.

There is no arguing that over the last several years our lives have both been irreparably changed. The upside, of course, is that through it all we’ve had each other to fall back on – even more, that one never has to ask the other to catch them, that it remains an unspoken rule between us.

I would, of course, like nothing more than to be able to grant Rod’s wish to have his father here today to share some cake, or to even stand on the back porch of his old house with him and share a cup of coffee and a cigarette and a few laughs – but that is not something that I am able to do. So I will say this instead…

In this life we often know many people. There are those that we believe we know but actually do not, and those we share ourselves with at a remove that will never be truly close to us. In many instances in life we are let down by those we believe to be trustworthy, that have given us the impression that their feelings towards us are unshakably sincere, and those that would use us for their own benefit without it troubling their conscience in the slightest. But sometimes in this life, if we are very lucky, we are gifted a bond with another person that is unquestionable in its strength, in its sincerity, and in its reliability. And though many might believe that they enjoy numerous relationships with a variety of people, the reality is that if you can seriously claim to have had one such true friendship in your time on this earth you are unbelievably lucky.

Personal politics, jealousy, and uncertainty are not elements that exist between those that are truly our friends. No matter how bad things might get, they are the ones that refuse to abandon us, even to their own peril, inconvenience, or disadvantage. That is what a true friend is, and therefore is not something that many can claim they actually possess. In my life I have been gifted such an unconditional friendship, and on this, his 40th birthday, though he doesn’t need to hear it from me, he remains one of the very few people in my life for which I would surrender my own to see him safe.

On behalf of myself, my brother and Chloe, and my parents, happy birthday buddy.