2000-05-24 - 18:21:41

May 24, 2000

Guilt

Quite some time ago after repeated visits to the psychiatric technician, it came to the stage of me seeing her just to get refill prescriptions. One of the last times I went there, while signing out and making arrangements for the next visit the clerk at the desk said something like, "OK Mr. Bastion, we'll see you one month from today."

A strangely tall man stepped up and quietly said to me, "Did I happen to hear the lady call you Mr. Bastion ?" I said, "Yes she did call me by my name." He said, "Did you go to X school in 1930 ?" I said, "Right, I sure did, were you there at the same time ?"

To explain my generation a bit, what with a depression and the war many of my friends and acquaintances never lived to return. Many returned and moved to the town where they had a fiance. Of those who did return I have never heard a peep. My good friends as far as I knew died in Europe or the Pacific Islands.

This man said, "We were best friends back in those days, I think you are Fred Bastion, aren't you ?" Becoming extremely interested and curious I replied in the affirmative. Then he told me his name and zap the full sized picture of him when we were young bloomed in my mind.

We went out the door and stood, conversing and catching up. It turned out that we had similar life experiences and reactions to them. Like me, he is an alcoholic in recovery, he also attempted suicide. And according to what he told me, none of our friends made it back. In the struggle for living and raising a family I hadn't had the time to do more than look in our metro area phone book for names of my classmates that I was interested in. Of course I never even thought of trying the old women who were girls when I was in boyhood because I figured that most of them had married and changed their names.

We exchanged telephone numbers and addresses with the expressed intent of going to lunch or for coffee soon.

In my trips down memory lane recently he had not floated to the top as I had long ago resigned myself to be without surviving boyhood friends. In one of my entries the run away section of my early teen years, he was the friend who accompanied me. He is the friend mentioned in many of my essays, nameless for his remaining families protection as well as mine.

It just occurred to me when I sat down at the keyboard and my fingers typed, "Old man isn't there someone you are forgetting that still lives from childhood ?" So, the guilt in waves covered me. In the moil of living, recovering, and surviving I had forgotten to get in touch with him, and apparently he with me. Tomorrow I will try to get in touch with him, tonight is committed to some one else. Now guilt digs, itches and hurts. How can anyone be so crass and selfish as to forget a friend who was practically a twin during my early years? I don't know how, but I did and regret ensues.

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