His long time best friend, a fellow professor, gave the most moving eulogy I have ever heard. In it, he discussed the levels of friendship. He was, of course, speaking specifically for guys, who have a different take on friendship than women. We have many more levels of friends:
1) The friends we can shop with because they won't lie to us in the fitting room and will say "that outfit makes you look like your mother on a bad day."
2) The friends we can watch "My Cousin Vinny" innumerable times with and still collapse on the floor laughing when Marisa Tomei stomps her foot and says "my biological clock is ticking like that!" Or "Dirty Dancing" with absolutely no irony in the fact we would have KILLED him for sleeping with our daughter at 16.
3) The friends we don't have to rehash all the family drama with because we grew up together and know each other's quirky (to put it mildly) relatives.
4) The friends who remember just how awful high school was and how that stayed with us for years.
5) The friends who remember college and our sketchy taste in boyfriends.
6) The friends we raised our kids with and feel no embarrassment about how a) we will never learn to put up that damn tent or b) "trading" daughters to French braid their hair because it's just easier or c) the unfortunate incident with the Halloween cupcakes.
But, I can really relate to Bob's commentary on the highest level of friendship: the Drinking Buddy.
Maybe because, as a journalist (or, as I prefer, old newspaper lady) I have had, and lost, some great drinking buddies: Mike Celizic, Phil Beck, and now, Frances Burns.
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| Fran and Miriam Ascarelli at a New Jersey Pro Chapter event in Montclair. |
It's not so much that Fran and I drank together often, it's that we had that kind of veteran reporter relationship with comfortable conversations about the papers where we had worked: "The Hudson Disgrace," "The Daily Wretched," "The Easton Distress." Or the editors we had (barely) tolerated. Or the sources who tried to lie to us.
We both started at newspapers in the good years, before the bean counters got control. And lived through some years of some awful bean counting.
Sure, I knew Fran was ill, but, with the damnable cockeyed optimism that I carefully hide behind my reporter's cynicism, I figured we had a lot more time to bitch about a certain rewrite man or laugh about the shenanigans of our fellow newsfolk. When she told me I should take some of her books I might like to have, I said, "next time. We've got plenty of time."
There wasn't a next time.
And, what I would give for a next time. To another Jack and Ginger with Mike or another Whiskey Rebellion with Phil, I now add another glass of wine or cup of coffee or just plain chat with Fran.
Not that most people will listen. Hell, I won't listen and I'm the one giving the advice, but: don't take friendships for granted. Especially the finest kind, the Drinking Buddy.
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| Fran and Maureen Nevin at a summer "meeting" at Maureen's house |
