The Friend

A few years ago now, a friend of mine suddenly died. He was my age. He had spent the last ten years or so working very, very hard to build a computer company. He was a wonderful man, great at a party and somewhat of a raconteur. He always brought people together. He once said that he was compiling a list of incredible people but the truth was that he was the incredible person who connected so many of us. Still, he was a remote person, hard to get close to in an intimate way. He was like a lot of men I know. Robert Bly put in best when he said, "It's well known that any man would prefer to walk thirty miles upwind in a blizzard than talk for ten minutes about his relation to a woman or to God." My friend was like that.

In the latter years of his life, his ambition became a dominant force in his life. When he died, his company was trading on the New York Stock Exchange. He was worth in the neighborhood of three million dollars. I had lost touch with him and only heard of his passing in the newspapers.

Just a few days after he died, I had a dream about this man. We were all at a party. I was very surprised to see him there. I walked up to him and said in my most direct manner, "So your not dead." He looked at me, quite shocked and a little hurt, "No," he said. "It was just a test." He seemed a little softer to me, a little more buffeted by the wind than I remember him. And then he said, "I'm more compassionate now. I listen to people more." And I rejoiced to have my friend back and I rejoiced to have my friend back somehow a better man than he was - and he was a very good man. And then I woke up -to grieve for him once more, while God continued to delight in his company.