Bill, dear friend, when you get to be as old as I am (and especially as old as YOU are!) it doesn't get any easier to be completely honest, but it gets a whole lot more important. Over the past few years you and I have had an honest friendship. Glory be! So, to be honest, I have to say that since I met you on the medicine ward at Durham County General in 1978 I guess I'd have to describe my relationship with you as love - hate - love.

So . . . you were my Senior Resident and I was the intern. Remember how we almost wet our pants the first night on call together? (Hey, we thought that bleeder was stable! Who knew she would break loose and go into shock at 3 a.m.?) Ah, the days of the giants. You were a great teacher. Human, yes, but close to God in my eyes.

Don't you know I thought I'd died and gone to heaven when we met at the AAFP meeting in New Orleans in 1981 and you invited me to join you and Evan in practice in Jonesville?! We shared some damn fine years together with Judy and Janet and Dora and all the rest of those great ladies. I learned from you every day how to be a better physician, but more how to be a mensch. One of the five biggest regrets of my life is that I allowed our little differences over the years to cloud my appreciation of the good points and values we shared. I wish we'd never broken up. I wish we'd worked it out.

And then came those black years where I was constantly angry and constantly imagining you were angry with me as well. Black, dark times of the soul. But slowly, incrementally, almost imperceptibly, a miracle happened. We tore down those walls stone by stone and came together again. We might say it was poetry that did it, starting with that workshop by Frank Levering to which Anne Gulley with great trepidation invited me, knowing you would be there, too. Oh, it is certainly poetic that we were able to heal those rifts. Poetry did it, and the many other small common things we share. But there was something larger happening as well. I've tried to express this to you before; I'll say it again so there's no mistaking -- as a result of us restoring our friendship, I've experienced the gift of grace. Thanks to you, Bill, serving as the instrument of our Creator. It's so groovy to be past the hate and back in love.

So here's my small gift to you, a man I deeply respect and admire. You have everything, a great family, a meaningful career of service, magic lips (on the harmonica, that's what I'm talking). But here are 20 lines I wrote a while back. I hadn't intended ever to show these stanzas to you, but the god of honesty pinched my cheeks. This is one from a whole series of poems titled "little mouse" -- don't each of us often feel so small and grey, and yet aren't we each part of some grander happening? Now that you're retired, I hope it won't be too long until we can hike a mountain and sit around a campfire together reading poetry and sharing the blues. THANKS . . . friend!


little mouse
(friends)

How long does it take forget
to limp along after
forgive? Are you the same
creature to whom I wished
such grievous harm? Black claws

of guilt to rake your soul,
misfortune’s wicked plow
to cleave your nest?
Evil one, how have you grown so
bafflingly companionable?

Or have I limped along so far I’ve found
snowdamp softens even thistle’s
prick? Foolishness! I vowed
forever barbs and dissonance.
More than years, it requires

shared verses to perfect the rhyme.
Now it’s time for you to play
your blue harmonica while I sing.
When ever did we hurt each other? When
did we hate? I forget.

BILL GRIFFIN