by James Wallace Harris, 7/6/25
I never knew my grandfathers. My father died in 1969. My grandmothers died in the 1970s. My mother died in 2007. All my twelve aunts and uncles have passed on. My sister, born in 1953, is still alive, but both her husbands and one son have died. Only seven of our twenty-four cousins are still alive. My wife, Susan, and I have known each other for forty-eight years, but we have no children.
Susan and I bought her parents’ house after they died. We hosted Christmas and Thanksgiving like her parents had for many years. As our nephews and nieces got married, they wanted to create their own holiday traditions. We stopped hosting holiday dinners. Since then, I seldom see people under sixty. I told one friend, who is 59, that she’s the youngest person I know.
Of the hundreds of people I knew in school, I kept in touch with only one person. He was my oldest friend whom I first met in 1967. I lost contact with him in April. I fear he is dead.
Before I retired, I had a large circle of friends at work. There were at least forty people I kept up with regularly. Twelve years later, I speak with one person every week on the phone, see another person about once a month, and text with a third person several times a year. All my other work friends have faded away. Several have died.
Outside of work, I’ve made many friends. Quite a few have died, but I’m still in contact with several of them, although that group is slowly shrinking. Of a group of six guys I hung out with in the 1970s, only two are still alive. I was born in 1951; only 72.8% of Americans born that year are still alive.
At seventy-three, I’m still quite social, but I realize that is changing. When I was younger, I assumed friends would only disappear when they died. But I’ve learned that many people have just drifted away. They got jobs in other cities, or they moved to a retirement community, or they quit driving, or withdrew from social life due to illness, or they moved away to be near their kids, or we just didn’t stay in touch.
Maintaining friendships requires effort. I thought being retired would give me all the time in the world to do everything I wanted. It hasn’t worked out that way. I have more time, but less energy and vitality. Aging means triaging friendships.
In recent years, I’ve often dreamed about the places I worked and all the people I knew in each job. I’d wake up from these dreams and lie in the dark and try to recall the names of all the people I knew in the job I just dreamed about. In the 1980s, I worked in a library for six years and got to know around twenty people. I’ve kept in touch with just one. But I really liked most of those people. Why didn’t I keep up with them? I know some have died, but what happened to the rest?
Over my life, I’ve had a couple of dozen good friends and hundreds of rewarding acquaintances. My sister once observed that we start out life in a room by ourselves with someone coming in to change our diapers, and we end up in a room by ourselves with someone coming in to change our diapers. She didn’t point out that we get to know hundreds of people in between.
Now that I’m on the downhill side of things, I’m experiencing a dwindling population of people I see regularly. I’m still making friends, but I fear they will only be acquaintances.
I’ve stopped driving at night, which caused me to see people less often, and for some folks, I’ve stopped seeing at all. Covid put a dent in my social circle. So did politics. Several people I once liked became unlikable after politics got so nasty.
People disappear for many reasons besides dying. Some for their reasons, some for mine. I need to make a greater effort to maintain my remaining friendships.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
I am just over 71. Whilst I was still at work (so I was under 56) I made friends with an old boy who lived in Bournemouth (by phone and email) I can’t remember what kicked the contact off, but I know he contacted me first. He was a funny old chap, full of energy and new ideas, and he used to phone me up at the University just for a chat. He was pretty old (late 80s early 90s from memory) and he told me that he had outlived all his friends (although he was still married at the time). He said it felt very lonely being Last Man Standing. He used to send me a Christmas card each year, and this went on for about 3 or 4 years, then no card. Finally caught up with him too 🙁
Very touching words. Time passes and people fade, but the friendships that remain are truly worth keeping.
Many thanks for this moving piece. It reminds of an essay by Borges (“Blindness”). At the end he quotes a line from Goethe, “Everything near becomes distant.”
Sounds like to me you’ve had a pretty full life with lots of friends. The pattern you are following is the pattern many of us follow.
I’m 78 widowed, no children, never knew either of my grandmothers and only knew my grandfathers when I was under six years old before they died. My parents were loners and we had little, if any, contact with cousins aunts and uncles. I had work friends, but they were basically….. work friends and that was long ago.
I have three close friends and one in particular I have known for over 60 years, as she was my brother’s first wife. I recently lost one friend who was my brother’s second wife.
Of course my parents are long gone and one brother has passed, but I still have one brother alive who is 86.
I think all of this is just the way life rolls and you’re either gonna be the last one standing and no one alive or you’ll die before one of your remaining friends do. I’ve resigned myself to it, yet it bothers me when I think about never existing again. I do not believe in an afterlife.
once again, i’m recalling the words of the late, lamented warren zevon: ‘ some days i feel like my shadow’s casting me.’ i hope yr reference to a vanished friend doesn’t concern connell; i’m hoping to make it back to miami this winter; i was trying to locate his number a while back and couldn’t find it. remember, our seventy-fifth reunion of our class will be 1994. i hope there will be somebody to reunite with.
I wrote you an email about Connell. Did you get it?
What if you went to the library now during the day time? The library usually offers social activities. I encourage you to break away from your normal routine and try something different. You are not alone, I may only be 31 but my mother often complains of this same feeling at age 63. The day my father died we all sat around the hospital bed in my mother’s living room and beside me we’re aunts and uncles that I never see and the only thing we could agree on is that none of us would be making it off of this earth alive, but I encourage you to make due with the time you have here.
It seems that after 70 friends start dropping off the perch in rapid succession. There are some friends that are like shooting stars, burning brightly then wizzing off to do something else. That’s ok they probably would have been exhausting if they’d stayed around. But there is one thing to remember and that’s to be thankful that they crossed our paths in life. Enjoy your day!