Friendships, Like Life, Come and Go and Stay

As I sit here chewing on my pen, figuratively speaking--I'm really at a keyboard watching my fingers bounce--I'm trying to find my way around a hole in a story.   You see, I have long believed something Aristotle wrote, that "friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies." My own view of that evolved into the notion that the best of friends share parts of their souls, and that departed friends live on by way of that shared soul.  This permanent sharing of one's soul implies a permanence I haven't always had or given to the friends I've encountered.  

In my life, which has led me a thousand miles from home and had me moving ten different times to new towns or cities, I have had the good fortune to make a number of friends at different stages of this life and in all those different places. They have drifted in and out of my life at times, since we've moved in different directions at different times.  What sometimes sinks in is the reminder that these old friends are still a part of me somehow.  In their day, we shared major portions of our respective lives and souls.  I am still aware on some level that these friends still inhabit parts of my soul, despite the fact we have not maintained contact, close or otherwise.    

During the long trip I made last month, I met a man who is in touch with an old friend of mine, one with whom I have lost contact for more than twenty-five years.  We talked--I about the youthful days when I knew him well, and he about the man he is today--the one I really do not know.  So is this old friend not a part of what makes me who I am?  Is he more a part of this man who encounters him from time to time in his present existence? 

Even as I stay in the same place, some friends step in and out of my life.  While it does mean we don't share what we once did, it doesn't mean that we no longer have what we shared.  Like friends who were teammates for a special championship season, or friends who shared a special road trip--or even Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca who will always have Paris, these friends always share a piece of what made them who they are.  So, today, when I was reminded of one of those transitory friendships, I remembered it was gone, but still here somehow.  I can't quite fill in the blank.  But I know I still carry around a piece of that person somehow.  Nothing's changed.