Fewer and Fewer

Meet-ups with friends used to be frequent. We’d find all excuses to get together. But these days, they have become fewer and fewer.  

The pandemic is, I guess, the first culprit. It turned us into hermits for three long years. And so we lost our bearings. From there, age crept in with workplace retirement. 

Get-togethers have ceased to be spontaneous. They are now planned months in advance and then cancelled at the last minute.   

But there was this one time that miraculously pushed through to celebrate three birthdays from weeks before and weeks apart. My ading Ggie (sister from another womb) made it happen with some magic potions and gobbledegook. 

And so we met in a Chinese resto, five of us. The dim world we live in lit up. Then Ggie announced, “I invited someone but he gave me a nebulous answer. So I am not sure if he is coming.”

“Who???” 

He came! Like an apparition from the past, he handed me a funky birthday present, but not before showing us a photo in his phone, reminiscent of a teaser in an ad campaign. 

 

“Who???” No less than the well-loved-and-respected former big boss in the ad agency where we all met, “ABAJA!” 

The past became the present. Old jokes became new. Stale news became current. Seniors became juniors. The entree was laughter and dessert was more laughter. He was a birthday celebrator, too, if you include all other months of the year. The many years in between meet-ups vanished like the smoke on our birthday cake.    

Friendship does not end with time and space. Like grace, its beauty never fades and has no end.  

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11