Lines

There's a daft squirrel that made me laugh above - there are half formed ramblings below....

It takes a wisdom I've only partially found with age to realise that the one true thing about a line drawn in the sand is that the tide of time will wash it away; we have the opportunity to start each day afresh.

When Mum was killed so much changed. I've written before everything changed, but of course it didn't, perhaps I just started to look through a clearer lens. Friendship was something I'd never felt a need to consider, I mean really really think about. I've always known that some friends are forever and some are for now - heck some people have even only really been close friends for the length of a climb, and some have carried the same conversation along for decades.
As the news of Mum spread some friends simply started to arrive, some never called, some we never expected to, some we never heard from again. I think for my brother, a child more fully of the social media age it was even more painful, a thousand acquaintances and few true friends, but I knew the people I held dear would be there.
Except for F. One of my oldest friends, one of my hard climbing friends, one of the original adventurers - F never called. When I needed all of my friends, one disappeared. And it rankled , it hurt.... and I drew a line.

Half a decade later a series of chance friend of a friend of a friend moments, the spinning connections of the world wide web and an 'is it you? ' bookface message. Then a text and a stilted call, a voice only just recognisable. Bit by bit we learnt some hard truths. As I'd burned through my grief, sat through the trial, disappeared to the mountains and changed my life - F had been fighting for his, 3 months in a coma, 6 months in hospital, forever changed. As Mum had died he'd come mighty close. He'd fallen off his mountain bike on a simple trail and broken his neck in 3 places. When he'd needed me I'd not even known.
He now has very little short term memory, we write things down to make plans, sleep, he says, wipes away most things. He'll always be F, all of the F I knew, but not all of the F he has been.

Today we met for the first time since we stirred those embers. There were hugs and tears, coffee, cake and laughter. F remembers climbs we did nearly 3 decades ago, could tell me just where we bivied under the cliffs of Buoux and what he wore to our wedding, but I'm not sure he knows my Mum is gone. And I can make my peace with that, I'm just glad to have him back.