What true friendship means

Over the past 6-7 months, Janet Wendy's large circle of friends has been showing what true friends they are. She has frequent visitors, many of whom come bearing gifts of flowers, food, books to read. Some of our neighbours in the condominium where we live have demonstrated their true friendship in these ways. Other friends belong to one of several groups of which she has been a member over the past quarter century or more. A few good friends have come from further away. Karen Kumar drove from Hamilton to Ottawa, a 6-7 hour drive, several weeks ago, solely to visit with Wendy and to bring her food and books. This week our friend Mariem Martinson, really primarily Wendy's friend, has flown across Canada all the way from Victoria BC to see her. These out of town visitors, and the local ones too, all demonstrate by their actions how much Wendy means to them. (It's interesting too, to see that there are some neighbours we thought of as friends, and a few others elsewhere we thought of as friends, who have not been near us. We don't hold this against them; we know that some people find contact with the sick a threatening, emotionally rather disturbing experience. There is one woman in this building who clearly feels uncomfortable even standing near her in the elevator). The support of these good friends at this troublesome time has been a great comfort to both of us. The best of them seem to know instinctively that just by coming to visit her they can throw an extra burden of work on us, so they don't require us to show them hospitality and leave us with dirty dishes to wash and put away. Some have a genuine gift for what to say and do when they visit the sick, can carry on a bright and entertaining conversation, can say and do things that lift the spirit. Fortunately for us and for them too, we've been spared god-botherers, devout believers in a deity that will soften all the harsh edges of life on earth, suffuse everything in a hazy glow of unreality. We don't believe in any god. I abandoned the weird mixture of myths, legends and implausible stories of miraculous cures and raising from the dead and the absolute rubbish of the eucharist that are central to Christian beliefs when I was a teenager. Wendy remained a Christian for a few years longer, or rather continued to go to church, mainly to develop support networks and make friends, until our own kids were teenagers and refused to continue any longer the rituals and accept the nonsensical beliefs of Christianity. She abandoned the church when the blatant hypocrisy of the practising Christians with whom she mingled became intolerable: their self-indulgent greed and lack of concern for the truly needy and those in real distress put her off, because she, in her own quiet way that I've written about elsewhere, is truly a selfless altruist and invariably puts the needs of others, even total strangers, ahead of her own -- which was something that none of her church-going friends apparently shared with her. Since she fell ill, not one of them has been to see her, nor, with one exception, have any of them even phoned to inquire about her, or to speak to her. In truth, she is a better Christian than any of them, even though she never goes to church. Perhaps I'm guilty of uncharitable thinking; they may all have valid reasons for their seeming lack of concern about her. But I doubt it. (Some other time in this blog I'll return to an aspect of this discussion and say something about my personal observations of the behaviour of people I know well who are practising believers in other gods than the Christian god: Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, Jews, who to my certain knowledge and personal observations, have behaved with more Christian charity and selflessness, more consideration for others more kindness and thoughtfulness, than any Christian believer I've ever known. But that's a topic for another day).