Friendship

Friendship has always been important to me, ever since I was a child. I am now approaching 67 years young and after all these years, friendship still takes pride of place in my life.

A very good friend recently passed away from this reality and her passing has given me much to think about. My friend, Alison and myself were part of a group of friends, a sisterhood who worked well together and had played even better together, over the past eighteen or so years.

Many of you will know that I had a very fragmented family set-up growing up and am grateful for all the life lessons this gave me however my upbringing flagged up a lack of camaraderie within the home. No siblings to row with, fall out with and then fall in with.

Perhaps that was why my friend, Alison and myself felt a deep bond. As two only children we were constantly searching for a sisterly relationship. An honest relationship, where you can be your true self, no questions asked.

A search for kinship in like minded souls has been a constant over the years and as my recently enforced leisure has given me much time to ponder, I realise that what I was looking for was "family". Not just a sisterhood or even a brotherhood but a fully functioning family! Who gets one of them? I have to ask. So many of us talk about coming from a dysfunctional family that I believe that this term must now mean "normal"!

I am grateful for the many friends who have been there for me, throughout schooldays, college, work situations and even retirement. Some, like Alison, have come and are now gone. Others are school friends with whom I lost touch and have miraculously reappeared in my life. And a few are a constant in my life, a mainstay core... However all of us feel the connection that pulls us together.

To you all I thank you ... not with the hand of friendship but with the warm embrace of a family hug.
grazie mille miei amici, la mia famiglia...
baci e un abbraccio

Eileen