Here's to our anam caras

These past few weeks have been pretty introspective and intense. And one the aspects that has stood out is the power and glory of friends. Not your party buddies. Or your office colleagues. But those three or four soul mates the more fortunate amongst us have, friends who are there for you and never question you or judge you, friends with whom picking up from where you left off has no statute of limitations. Their door is always open and there is no substitute for that super, soaring sensation of knowing they are there. Usually, these friendships are forged in childhood and stretch over years. Even half a century and more.
Someone shared a message with me and I can only reproduce it because it cannot have been said any better. "There's a Gaelic phrase that describes the kind of friendship: anam cara. In Celtic tradition, according to poet John O'Donohue, an anam cara was someone "you could share your inner-most self, your mind and your heart. This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging. When you had an anam cara, your friendship cut across all convention, morality and category. You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the 'friend of your soul'."
It is so true.
The French writer Joseph Roux wrote, "We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower, that man who has lost his wife," he wrote. "But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here, every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence."
What a brilliant sentiment... holds its peace in impotence.
I have lost a couple of very dear friends and the explanations are so flimsy and inadequate.
He was like a brother, even more.
We were peas in a pod, inseparable, I have lost part of myself.
And sometimes you get an answer like, oh, not your real brother, just a friend, that's alright then.
No, it's not. What is true is that no language has dared to express through words the texture, the sheer exhilaration that comes with that kinship. And the agony of the loss, the tearing, ripping gut-wrenching absence of someone who never found you too heavy, whose door you could knock on and know full well it would open.
bikram@khaleejtimes.com
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