A Friend is a Treasure
I lost a friend, actually a brother from another mother, last December. There was and is pain in the loss but that is tempered with a deep sense of gratitude that we had somehow maintained our friendship for over fifty years in spite of the many changes in our lives and career moves that never allowed us to live close together again.
His name was Dr. Joe Garms.
We met while I was a pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was a psychologist with the heart of a social worker. We bonded and he became my mentor as I tried to deal with a very heavy load of pastoral care. He claimed I was a help to him as well but there is no way for that to have been equal.
He moved to Texas, and I felt lost but then I ended up moving to a city fifty miles from where he was working. The distance and the business of our jobs did not allow us to have the same closeness as before, but the friendship remained.
His wife died in a car accident, and we drew close again. After a time, he married again and moved to Germany to work for the U.S. military there. Most communication faded and as always happens when there is not constant companionship, we became friends we missed but only communicated through Christmas cards.
When my wife died, he and his wife came. I was both shocked and thrilled to see them. I had no idea they even knew of the death and yet there they were. That happened nearly thirteen years ago, and I still get emotional writing about how that felt. Nothing means more than the presence of a true friend when your heart is breaking.
After the funeral there were so many friends in our home, I could not get a chance to visit with him in private, but he said, “We are here as long as you need us so we will find time to talk.” We found each other again. It was like we had never been apart, the warmth and love were still there, and we never let it diminish again. We discovered the treasure of a true friendship.
The magic of zoom allowed us to spend several hours a week in face-to-face contact and we could never seem to get enough. Then he informed me he was in stage four cancer, and we began walking together as he faced death with courage and dignity I found amazing.
I think his life could be summed up in what he did when the diagnosis came. He found two other people who were dying with cancer and ministered to them. One was a woman who had very little time left. My friend took his guitar there and sang to her. At her request he was there when she died. He called me that night and said he thought he had seen angels there that day. The angel there that day was the guy holding the guitar.
Our last visit was on his 85th birthday just a few days before he died. We talked about life beyond life. We talked about how much we loved each other and how much that love had impacted our lives. Then he said, “We are brothers from another mother and I wish we could hold hands and go together.” I wished for the same thing.
We often hear how few real friends we have in our lives and that is true, but looking back on my life I wonder how many friends I have known that could have become deeper and more intimate friends if I had spent the time and effort to develop such a bond. I have had a lot of close friends just fade away out of my life. I have had several do so in the last few years as our nation has become so polarized. It is hard for me to imagine that friends would allow friendships to die over politics.
Most of the ones who faded did so because they were not nurtured. Friendships don’t grow on their own, they take time, effort, physical contact, sharing and love.
A character on a TV show I have been watching summed it up. Two friends were in conflict and discovered they were not as good friends as they thought and really did not understand each other. One of them said, “I think too often friendships are our back yard gardens we intend to work on next week.”