Around 14 years ago, one of my closest friends told me he had been diagnosed with colon cancer. I was shocked by the news but he didn’t seem any different and I knew he’d be just fine. After all, he was in his mid-thirties like I was and it was just a hurdle to overcome and life would be fine again.
But then it wasn’t. As the months progressed, he got worse and worse and the chemotherapy and radiation didn’t fix things. Things started to blur. He started getting all his affairs in order to take care of his wife and young son. And then, before we knew it, he reached stage 4, went to hospice, and then passed away.
I was devasted (I’m actually welling up as I type this). I couldn’t even process what went through my mind. I felt like it wasn’t fair to him for his life to be cut so short. It wasn’t fair to his wife and young son who now had to continue without him. And it wasn’t fair to his parents, friends, and other family who lost them in their lives. I felt robbed of a great friend.
They say that time heals all wounds and, although it still hurts to think about, life does move on. But we still think of him often and raise a glass to him every year on his birthday as well as on the anniversary of his death.
That was in my mid-thirties. I’m now 49. I’m also starting to notice something that I never did before. When my friend died 13 years ago, this was an uncommon event. It’s unusual for people to die at such a young age. It’s also not the norm for folks to pass away around age 50 either… but it will start to be less uncommon with every passing year.
I’m going to start hearing from friends and family more and more over the years that this person is in the hospital fighting for their life or that person just passed away unexpectedly.
Here’s the thing… that’s the circle of life. We’re all going to die at some point and the older we get, the more we’ll see others slowly falling off the grid… until it’s our turn.
You can’t stop it – it’s coming eventually.
But there is something that you can do to make that grief slightly less burdensome. Well, there’s one thing I’m going to do… work on rekindling relationships with old friends. Here’s the scoop…
Why did this suddenly become important now?
I’m pushing the line on that big ol’ 50 mark. It’s not until next summer, but time waits for no one.
That in and of itself isn’t too big of a deal to me. Sure, I have the symptoms of getting a little older like bad knees, a bad back, and needing to pull out a pair of readers to be able to read anything at night.
But I’m lifting weights every day, trying to get out and walk whenever I can, I don’t have the stress of a 9-5 job, and we continue to do some really cool things in our days to live in the moment. Life’s pretty darn good for this 49-year-old!
So, it’s not like some mid-life crisis making me think my time’s running out. Plus, if I die, it won’t bother me much anyway, right?
Instead, it’s all about something happening to others.
You see, I’ve noticed that when someone older (like my parents, for instance) finds out that someone from their past passed away, they might say something like, “Wow, we used to be so close back in high school. It’s probably been 25 years since I’ve seen them. How horrible.”
That’s the biggest problem I’m now recognizing. Over time, everyone tends to go their separate ways. Each of us gets busier as life goes on – maybe with careers, marriage, kids, moving to new places for a job or better life, etc. You can’t stop life from rolling forward.
Seeing loved ones fall out of the lives of people who are a little older than me lately has been an eye-opener. I don’t want to be the one hearing bad news and realizing that I hadn’t talked to that person in years.
Time for rekindling relationships with old friends!
You can’t stop the bad things from happening to those you care about. It’s pretty straightforward – the longer you live, the more you’ll start to see others you’re close with start to disappear. That’s the circle of life and you can’t prevent it.
What you can do though is regroup more often with those people you care about by working on rekindling relationships. Maybe it’s just through a phone call or a visit, but working to carve a little time out for people is important.
So as I’ve been thinking about this, I decided that that’s what I’m going to actively start doing. I already have a little more flexibility on the time side of things as an early retiree. Now I just need to take the next step and reach out to people.
This should be interesting as many of my friends have left Ohio and moved to different places around the country. But I’m not going to let that stop me – I really want the idea of rekindling relationships to be a priority.
More than that, I want to try to reconcile with friends from my past who I felt I did wrong. Maybe they weren’t big things, but why leave it out there if you don’t need to?
This is something I’ve had on my bucket list to try to do…
As a side note, you can read more about creating the ultimate bucket list and “next chapter” matrix in my post, Creating Your Dream Life: The Ultimate Bucket List Blueprint. I’ll even send you a copy of this and a bunch of other cool spreadsheets you can use for free by hopping on my mailing list…
So rekindling relationships and reconciling with old friends is something that’s been heavy on my mind. I miss many of the old friends I’ve mostly lost touch with over the years, especially my old gang of high school buddies. We were such a tight group and then, well, life happened over time.
Apparently, I’m not the only one in my group of old friends thinking this way either. One of my old high school buddies lives out of state and his wife asked him what he wanted for his upcoming 50th birthday. He thought about it and told her that he’d like nothing more than to have our old group of friends together.
She ran with that and put together a surprise party for him and invited all of us (along with all the other folks in his life). I’m writing this right before I fly out there (it’ll have happened by the time this post comes out), but I know that our old group was coming in from a couple of different states to see him and get together.
I can’t tell you how excited I am about this! Talk about rekindling relationships!
Now, I do want to take this to the next level (as always). I started putting together a spreadsheet (of course!) to list those folks who are close to me that maybe I haven’t seen and spent time with in a long time.
And then I’m going to start reaching out to them to talk and try to line something up. Whether we get together at a bar or coffee shop, have lunch or dinner somewhere, or I just make a quick visit to their house, the important thing is that we get a little quality time together.
That’s it. That’s the whole plan.
Will this solve everything?
Is the idea of rekindling relationships going to solve things and keep people from dying?
Of course not.
Funny enough, it might make it worse on one level in that we’ll have gotten closer again so the wound could be a little more impactful.
However, knowing that I made an effort to be close to people I care about will give me some inner peace. I hope that I’ll find some relief in knowing that I got to spend time laughing with that person before they passed.
In other words, it’s not going to stop anyone from dying, but it can alleviate some of the regrets of not spending more time with them when I could.
On the flip side, if I’m the one to die first (is that even possible?!), my hope is that my friends and family will appreciate the time we spent together as well.
When we were on our 8-month road trip across the country, we took advantage of the opportunity to visit several old friends when we could:
- My brother and sister-in-law in Texas (along with several friends we’ve made there through them)
- Joe Saul-Sehy in Texas from the infamous Stacking Benjamins podcast along with his wonderful wife
- My especially good friend Fritz in Georgia (who you probably know from The Retirement Manifesto) and his awesome wife, Jackie
- A couple of my close high school buddies in Georgia and their fantastic wives
- Our great friends Steve and Courtney in Arizona
- My uncle and his roommate in Nevada
- Our incredible friend and former Panamanian neighbor who we were lucky enough to see in both North Carolina and Wisconsin
- My best friend since before high school and his wonderful wife in North Carolina
We didn’t get to see everyone we would have wanted, but it was still awesome to get together with those we did.
The point is that these are folks who we don’t get to see very often, but freedom of time due to early retirement made that possible.
All those stupid things we sometimes put so much focus on now will likely be completely irrelevant later. Spending time with those you care about and rekindling relationships with the important people in your life with whom you lost touch is much more important. That’s what matters in the long run so I’m stepping up to make that a priority in my life.
Plan well, take action, and live your best life!
Thanks for reading!!
— Jim
You’re getting wiser (and more insightful) as you approach your 50th trip around the sun. Great idea, great read. I hope your weekend in Georgia was as awesome as you’d hoped. Also, seeing you during your RV trip will always be a special memory. On a related note, I’ve never been to a High School class reunion, may need to think about heading back to Michigan to catch the next one. Thanks to you…
Thanks, Fritz! The time in Georgia with my old friends was really great. If I didn’t need to leave there and head to SC for vacation with the family, I likely would have stayed a little longer and tried to get together with you for a day or two. Next time!
I’ve only done one class reunion and I’m glad I did – it was a lot of fun seeing some old friends you rarely get to see. If you do go, that could be a great post for you to write about!! 😉
Yup yup, 100% man… One of the first things I did last year when I pretended I was retired (lol) was to make a list of all my old college friends and find a way to have lunch with them. Almost all of them are 1-2 hours away so it wasn’t too bad, but i made it a point to GO TO THEM since they’re all still working of course and then less chance of them saying “no” too haha… It was amazing not only to catch up IN PERSON, but to see how much their lives, and even bodies in half the cases, have changed too. We’re all growing and learning and maybe a tiny bit getting wiser, but it was like going down memory lane with each and every one of them and I could tell it meant a lot. Who reaches out to have lunch anymore?! everyone’s so busy and moved over to online comunications – ugh…
Anyways, all that to say that I approve and I hope some of your friends are aroujnd the world so you get yet another excuse to travel more 🙂
That’s awesome that you got together with your old friends like that, J! I like your thought of going to them, too since you’ve got more flexibility than they do. My cousin who I try to get together with routinely just said to me a couple of weeks ago that he appreciates that I always tell him that he can choose the day/time we get together since he’s still working and extremely busy. In the end it works well for everyone and like you said, it’s hard for them to say no!
Haha, I do have a good friend from high school in Hawaii who said we’re welcome to stay with them when we come to visit, so that’s a huge bonus. I need some more friends in cool places like that! 🙂
This!!! Looking forward to doing this when I’m FI too 🙂 I agree when you see friends after so many years, it’s like no time has passed and going down memory lane. Sadly when they say “we should do this again soon!” it doesn’t happen that way.
Jim, this post is probably one of the most genuine and heartfelt I have read in a while. Nobody really talks about this stuff. More of the stuff you see online is how to make X amount online, investing in this, look at where we are traveling, etc.
I with you 100% on reaching out and trying to spend time with those you’ve lost touch with. What I’ve found is, friends appreciate the initiative, and the follow through to make sure something gets on the calendar and happens, but seems like these days many people don’t like the commitment, or putting it on the calendar. Apparently have a “scheduled hangout” gives people stress. Who knew!
Maybe it ties to how busy everyone is and that’s just one more thing. But to your point, what is life in the end if not full of rich relationships? How is that in the 90’s and 2000s, our parents had careers, a mortgage, kids to take care of, but I remember going to so many backyard BBQs, volleyball picnics in the park, holiday gatherings, etc. I don’t know why everyone feels so busy, maybe it’s because some spend more time on social media now and get their “fix”, yet spending time in person is so much more fulfilling. It could also be the guilt aspect of “wasting” time sitting with friends rather then trying to make more in today’s hustle culture.
Anyway, excellent post and look forward to hearing about he updates!
Much appreciated, my friend. Maybe it’s because I’m already retired and have more time to figure things out or maybe it’s because I’m just “at that age” where I start reflecting more. Regardless, I think this is something extremely important to do (at least for me) to find true happiness. That’s interesting that you mention how as kids we seemed to have more social events going on. That could be because we were younger and those are the memories that stand out more for us or maybe it truly is because we actually aren’t spending as much time together nowadays. Either way, I’m hoping to change some of that in my social circles. 🙂
That’s a great goal. We need to socialize more as we age. Loneliness is a big problem in the U.S.
I’ve been trying to socialize with my old friends as well. It’s tough for me because most of them live in other states. Next summer, I’ll take a road trip to see them. Meanwhile, I’m trying to text/email them more often. They are glad to correspond that way. Most of them are way busier than I am.
That’s great that you’re going to see them next year. It’s tough when friends are far away but worth it if you can make it happen. Hopefully, one day, I’ll be able to meet you as well, Joe!
Having quality relationships is a big part of having a happy life. But having stayed close to someone, like I did with two of my better friends, who both died recently, in their fifties, in no way lessens the pain of loss. In fact it multiplies it greatly when you lose someone you love versus some old friend you haven’t spoken to in years. Staying close to old friends has lots of benefits but it will increase the amount of grief you will go through when you lose them. Its a good trade off, but the idea that it somehow lessens the sense of loss is 180 degrees off in my opinion. Every choice in life has good and bad consequences. Having many close relationships is the same. It offers much joy, but also more pain.
So sorry about the losses, my friend. That makes sense that it would increase the grief by being closer, but hopefully the good times and memories help in feeling at least a little comfort. I guess like anything, if you get close to people (or even pets), the hurt you’ll feel at some point down the line is inevitable. I think you saying that it’s a good trade off seems to be a good way to put it.