By JIM NICHOLS

Sometimes the best ministry involves omitting one activity and emphasizing two others. What we can often omit is our talking so much; just keep my mouth shut more. What we can add is using our eyes and our ears more. What are we seeing and hearing?

I find it hard to believe that it was 1968 when Simon and Garfunkel released “Old Friends.” In case you are unfamiliar with the song, or it has been too long, I mention a few of the lines in the short tune.

“Old friends sat on their park bench like bookends,
A newspaper blown through the grass falls on the round toes of the high shoes of the old friends.
Winter companions, the old men lost in their overcoats waiting for the sunset.
Can you imagine us years from today sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy.”

The chaplain entered the room of the care center and found two others already there. The patient’s daughter stood at some distance from the bed and, during the visit, often wept. The other person was an elderly man, about the age of the patient in the bed. He was an old friend, as soon became obvious. He stood much closer to the bed. The daughter sat down in a chair, as did the chaplain. The old friend continued to stand the whole time and occasionally would reach over and touch the patient.

One can quickly learn a lot about a patient’s room by observing the physical position of others in the room. Who is standing and who is not? Where are the multiple people positioned within the room? Are there some closer to the bed and some farther back? There are reasons people have chosen their place and it might be important in the dynamics of the room.

Ninety percent of the speech in the room was coming from the old friend. With the easy confidence of years of companionship with the patient, he moved from one topic to another, although much of it involved golf. The patient, although clearly quite weak and ill, watched and listened to the old friend and his eyes responded with recognition as to what he was hearing. On occasion, he would add a brief comment; he was obviously well-involved in the conversation.

The chaplain asked about the photographs on the wall. The daughter noted one of her mother as a young woman. The old friend added (to the patient), “That’s what she looked like when you first introduced me to her.” He smiled at the patient and got a return smile.

Mingled among the golf stories, the old friend spoke with inside knowledge about girlfriends and school memories. They smiled and laughed together as they described pranks and achievements, probably the only two in history who knew about or remembered the specifics. Apparently, their children had shared lives in their young families and those times brought soft words and thoughts of the past. 

Countless words have been written about the multiple facets of friendship. In a high school Latin class, we laboriously translated much of Cicero’s treatise “de Amicitia” (“on Friendship). With the aid of a spectacular classroom teacher, my life was enriched by reading, discussing, and probing words written in 44 BC. We all knew about friendship, even at 17.

We seriously deceive ourselves by thinking that we have developed as individuals alone. We might admit the influence (positive or negative) of our parents but standing prominently in the lives of each of us are friends. Friends who shared our troubles and dreams and shaped us into who we are today. 

From where do our friends arise? The first meetings are often an accident (if there is any such thing as an “accident” to God). Upon moving to a new community as a third grader, in the first day of my new school, the teacher assigned another boy to be my “friend.” He ended up becoming an old friend.

Being in that room of the care center was a reminder that an old friendship is a holy thing, almost a sacrament. With an old friend, you have a supplement to your own memory; additions, confirmations, and refutations can be added. Old friends stand by.

Jim Nichols is a retired Abilene Christian University biology professor and current hospice chaplain