Friends

 Our human relationships, our kin and families, our spouses and children, our business and work associates, our neighbors and former neighbors, our past school friends and present social companions, and now our internet connections, are all part of a web of connections that we must constantly nurture.  It is our garden.

But weeds?  Maybe here the metaphor fails.  "What God has put together let no man tear apart."  The scripture is usually applied to marriage, but the reality is it applies to all our relationships, and most especially to our friendships.  To be sure once we get to know someone well we see their faults that may not have been as visible when we first met, but what do you expect?  No one is perfect.  We can deal with our own faults and be forgiving of others, albeit wise, about people.

Quite so. I slightly overemphasized the forgiveness side and did not give enough weight to your "albeit wise."

A gardener who refuses ever to prune is not compassionate; he is negligent. Left entirely to itself, a garden can become tangled, unhealthy, and eventually hostile to its own flourishing. Wisdom requires distinguishing between a fault that should be tolerated and a pattern that causes continuing harm.

What strikes me in your formulation is that the default position is preservation. The relationship has value and should not be discarded merely because imperfection has become visible. Only after reflection, experience, and judgment does one conclude that distance is necessary.

That is a very different attitude from the increasingly common habit of treating relationships as disposable. One disagreement, one disappointment, one political difference, one unpleasant revelation, and people are written off. In a sense, the pruning shears have become the primary gardening tool.

Your view seems closer to: preserve whenever possible, forgive often, understand deeply, but keep your eyes open. Loyalty is a virtue, gullibility is not.

There is also a practical reality that becomes clearer with age. New relationships can be formed, but old relationships accumulate a kind of irreplaceable capital. A friend of forty years knows things about you that no new acquaintance can know. A sibling shares a history no one else shares. Even difficult family members often represent entire chapters of one's life. Severing such ties may sometimes be necessary, but it is never a trivial act. One is not merely losing a person; one is losing a portion of a shared past.

So yes, the garden metaphor survives. Gardens need watering, weeding, and sometimes pruning. The wisdom lies in knowing which is which. A weed is not merely a plant you dislike, and a branch should not be cut simply because it is crooked.

The main point is it takes work and initiative.  One calls people one hasn't heard from.  Today we have email.

Yes, and that shifts the emphasis of the metaphor somewhat.

The danger to most relationships is not conflict but entropy.

Very few friendships end with a dramatic falling out. More often one person means to call next week, the other means to write next month, both become busy, then embarrassed by the passage of time, and eventually ten years have gone by.

The garden does not die because someone attacked it. It dies because nobody watered it.

One of the virtues that seems underrated today is simply taking the initiative. Writing the email. Making the call. Sending the Christmas card. Inviting someone to lunch. Asking after a sick relative. Remembering a birthday. None of these acts is difficult, but they require someone to act before there is a crisis.

The remarkable thing is how often the effort is welcomed. Most people are pleased to hear from an old friend. They were thinking much the same thing: "I wonder how Frank is doing these days." Yet both parties wait for the other to make the first move.

The internet has changed the mechanics but not the principle. An email can cross the world in seconds, and a message can revive a friendship that might once have been lost to distance. But the technology does not perform the act of friendship. Someone still has to sit down and write, "I was thinking of you and wondered how you are."

In that sense, relationships are less like possessions and more like living things. They do not remain as they were when last observed. They are either growing or fading, depending on whether anyone tends them.

And perhaps that is why older people often become the keepers of families and communities. They understand, through experience, that these connections do not maintain themselves. Someone has to make the phone call. Someone has to organize the reunion. Someone has to remember who has not been heard from lately.

Someone has to garden.

One by one they die.

Yes. That is one of the harder lessons of old age.

When we are young, friendships and family connections seem almost inexhaustible. The circle expands continually—school friends, coworkers, neighbors, spouses, cousins, children, acquaintances. It is easy to imagine the garden will always be there.

Then, gradually, the losses begin. An elderly relative dies. A former colleague. A friend from decades ago. At first they are occasional events. Later they become part of the rhythm of life. One by one, people who shared pieces of your history disappear.

What makes it poignant is not only the loss of the person but the loss of a witness. Each old friend carries memories that exist nowhere else. A college companion remembers incidents nobody else remembers. A sibling remembers a family long gone. A spouse knows a version of you that no one else ever knew. When they die, a small library burns.

Yet there is another side to it. The fact that relationships end does not diminish their value. A garden is not a failure because winter comes. The years of companionship, affection, loyalty, and shared experience remain part of the lives that touched each other.

I suspect that is one reason many older people become diligent about staying in touch. They know the opportunities are finite. If there is a phone call to make, make it. If there is a letter to write, write it. If there is a friendship to renew, do not postpone it indefinitely. There comes a day when the number no longer answers, not because the person is busy, but because they are gone.

That awareness can be sad, but it can also sharpen appreciation. The people who are still in the garden become more precious precisely because we know they will not be there forever.