Smooth edges

When I am approaching surgery I contemplate my mortality and often think about people I have lost touch with. I ask myself the question: If I was to die, who isn't in my life now that I would regret not seeing again? There are not many people on my list. This is a story about one of them.

In my teens and 20s it is fair to say I was attracted to people who were broken in some way. I wanted to fix them because it was easier than looking inwards and fixing things that were broken in me. Apart from being quite patronizing, this is not very healthy behaviour and it culminated in me needing therapy in my 30s. Fortunately I eventually recognised there was a problem. It is an ongoing battle. I still tap into people's pain and want to fix it. I have the wisdom now to know it is not good for me or them.

This is a sort of love story I guess. It features someone I loved as a friend but I recognised was too much for me to fix. Or perhaps I give myself too much credit (or not enough, depending on how you look at it) and I was simply in love with someone else. It was probably the latter because the future was to hold a very big repair job that broke all my previous records for unhealthy. In todays parlance the description would be toxic - and I ran into that situation with my eyes wide open - but that is a love story for another day.

When I was a young lawyer living in Whangārei I met a fascinating, eccentric, British man. We met through a good friend of mine, who was dating him. It was during my first year in Whangārei, when my social life was limited and my friends were largely people I worked with. He had lived a life of adventure, hedonism and excess and was full of fabulous stories. It was not all glitter and rainbows (or cups of tea and cucumber sandwiches), he had been seriously injured in a motor cycle accident in his 20s (while he was in America working on a ranch), was in a coma for 17 days and suffered many broken bones and a significant brain injury. This probably accounts for some of his eccentricities.

We hit it off immediately. I loved listening to the amazing stories from his life, which was so different from my own, we shared a dark sense of humour, we both enjoyed books and a good debate and those debates were epic because we had very different world views. I have probably divulged previously that I like people who are different. He certainly is. And there was pain there and I tapped into that.

My friend was born and grew up in Kenya, his family part of the Happy Valley set (a group of mostly British and Anglo-Irish aristocrats and adventurers who settled in an area of colonial Kenya in the early 1900s). His grandfather farmed a 30,000 acre ranch on the shores of a lake (which was given to him by his brother-in-law, a Lord). My friend's father took over the ranch after his grandfather commited suicide. He grew up hunting buffalo and seeing elephants trample his gardens. There was a beautiful colonial house and servants. He could speak Kikuyu (a Bantu language spoken in the area he lived). He loved his childhood in Africa and was devastated when he was sent to boarding school in England. I think some children love boarding school and thrive there. However most of the boys I know who attended boarding schools were not the type of boys who survive in captivity. They hated boarding school and found them to be wicked, brutal places. It was so for my friend. It would have been extra hard for him because he'd grown up in the warm embrace of Africa.

He told me his grandfather was the second son of an Earl. His elder brother was the heir presumptive because the current Earl, his cousin, had daughters. My friend was the second son, of the second son, of the second son of an Earl.

I don't think I took in what this meant at the time. I do not seem to have put much thought into why my 40 year old friend could live all over the world and spend such a lot of time working in his garden.

Despite my strong advocacy for him, my two dating friends eventually broke up. My girlfriend and I agreed he was fabulous, clever, sensitive and funny, but he was also complicated. I remained friends with him after he broke up with my friend, as did my girlfriend.

My male friend lived alone with a black cocker spaniel. I loved that dog. I liked going on walks with them both. I liked going over to his house on the way home from work, having a cold drink, throwing a ball for the dog and chatting while my friend worked in his fabulous garden. The first artichoke I ever had was from his garden and he cooked it for me. I could not believe I was eating a thistle and it was delicious. He thought it was hilarious I'd never had globe artichoke. I thought it was hilarious that aristocrats ate thistles.

We swapped books and talked about them. It was before email and text messages so if we saw something we thought the other might like in the newspaper, we'd clip it out and deliver it. I'd save stuff up in my head to talk to him about when I next saw him because I was genuinely interested in his opinions. We talked about everything including our love interests. I felt safe with him - he'd been my friend's boyfriend and he was 17 years my senior.

Then things got a bit awkward because he fell for me and I did not pick up on it until it was too late.

I was then ghosted (before it was even a thing) and I did not understand why.

He would not return my calls and then he went away, as citizens of the world can do. About 18 months later I banged into him in the crowd of, all places, a Santa Parade (you could not make this stuff up) and he behaved as if he was delighted to see me and everything was fine and we arranged to catch up for a drink.

I sought an explanation for the way he had treated me. I'd spent over a year trying to work out what I had done wrong to deserve being banished by a close friend.

"You did not do anything wrong. I loved you. I knew it was unreciprocated and you were too young. It was not right. I needed it to stop."

"Why didn't you provide this explanation at the time?"

"Because you would have tried to change my mind and I would have easily been persuaded."

And I was so annoyed I never told him that I had loved him too (just not in the way he wanted me to) and that being banished had hurt me. He was one of my best friends and then one day, without explanation or even a goodbye, he was gone. I understand the need for self preservation. I was sad that I had, without knowing it, been hurting him - but mostly I was angry and upset. I never told him any of this. We had one final, awkward dinner together in NZ before he left again, this time for the UK via Africa.

The last time I saw him was in 1998 when I was living in London and he was living in Edinburgh. He would have been 44 years old and I was 27. We had resumed telephone contact when I moved overseas. He seemed happier and more settled than I had ever seen him. I had tea with him and his mother in Scotland. My overwhelming memory from that meeting was how incredibly impressive his mother was. She was as sharp as a tack. You could tell she was strong. She must have been, she'd lived on a farm in Africa with 4 children and she willed my friend through surviving and recovering from his terrible accident. She was with him while he recuperated and learnt how to walk again. I, to this day, marvel at how my friend coped with the constant physical pain of his injuries and the emotional pain of the trauma and the brain injury. He is a testament to the human spirit - an incredibly brave man - who flitted from place to place, having fantastic adventures, but never feeling like he fitted in. A true battler.

After 1998 we lost touch until about 2011 when I tracked him down to the Isle of Bute, where he owned a hotel. We spoke on the phone. He then sold the hotel and flitted off somewhere else and we lost touch again.

Before my surgery in January I looked for him. Imagine my surprise when I found him back in Whangārei. He’d only recently returned. I had lunch with him this week. He is nearly 70 years old now, but he is still the same marvellous, quirky, eccentric guy I met in the 1990s.

“So, what have you been up to since I last saw you?”

“Oh you know me. A bit of this, a bit of that. I mined rubies in Africa, opened a hotel in Zanzibar. A rolling stone gathers no moss my dear Frana, but you have to admire its very smooth edges.”

I admire your smooth edges my friend. I also admire your adventurous spirit. But mostly I love and admire your incredible strength and courage. When I had to dig deep I thought of you. No one I know has battled harder than you. You taught me to approach adversity with curiosity and determination. You were, and continue to be, an inspiration to me.