Intimacy | Richard Griffin

Richard Griffin wrote a touching piece about how his conversations with a terminally ill friend have changed their relationship and opened him up to greater intimacy.

My friend Frank (not his real name) answers his phone. He has this notoriously unreliable Bluetooth earpiece that he loves to use. Today it’s having a bad day. He sounds like a Martian. I tell him I’ll call back. When he answers the second time he’s no longer a Martian. I say, “Ah! It’s my old friend Frank – the one I know and love!” 

This joke brings him to tears because he’s not my old friend Frank, he’s the new Frank. The one who is fighting a disease that will shorten his life dramatically. This sort of painful moment has become more and more common in our conversations. We’ve been doing these regular phone calls for several years now, starting long before the disease was discovered. In the beginning, our conversations were sometimes awkward, maybe even boring. But they were meaningful enough that we kept having them. Today, neither of us would give them up for the world. They have become a touchstone of sanity for us, a sanctuary from an increasingly chaotic and unpredictable world. We have discovered that we love these conversations and we love each other. 

Intimacy | Richard Griffin :