Friendship has to be worked at

- yes worked at.
There is a piece in the paper this morning. It has been written by someone who is retired but still writes the occasional column for the state newspaper.  He is the last surviving writer trained by the English teacher I had in my last year at school. I don't always agree with him but I like his writing. And I liked this morning's column.
He had things to say about friendship.
I was reminded, as I often am, of that English teacher. She became a friend although she was on verge of retiring and I was still very young. At first she would contact me until I had the courage to contact her one day - excited because I had found a recently published book I thought she might want to read. After that what had been a teacher-student relationship slowly grew into a friendship that remained until she died.
I have had other similar friendships with much older people. There was the woman who was the secretary of my mother's school. She maintained a relationship with my mother until my mother died and then, surprisingly, phoned me. Could we meet? I went. She was a lonely woman for all her activities. We would talk on the phone. I'd listen to her stories of her four boys and the day after one of them died I, with considerable trepidation, phoned her. It was the right thing to do. She wanted to meet. After that I would occasionally make the trek to the other side of the city and we would have "breakfast" at a cafe she liked in the big shopping centre near her home. In an odd way I do miss those occasions even though she was nothing like my English teacher. And yes, I suppose we were friends... perhaps better friends than she ever was with my mother.
I have a friend here, someone I have known since my teens. We don't see one another that often but  when we do we simply pick up where we left off.  She once remarked on that, saying how we could just feel comfortable with one another whatever was going on. It is the only friendship which has survived over that space of time. 
When you move, as I have, overseas or  to another state things do change. People I knew have married. I have no idea where they are or what they are doing. I know their lives will have changed. Some of their friends will now be the parents of the children their children went to school with. I have forgotten their names and what they looked like. They were probably never friends, just people I went to school with and had little to do with there or anywhere else. 
Last year I went to the funeral of the son of friends here. It was a very big funeral...there were hundreds of people there. As the eulogies were being given it was obvious that this man had worked at friendships. He would organise his mates into doing things - things he knew they wanted to do. One of them, a grown man, broke down as he spoke of how much that friendship had meant at a low point in his life. 
Most of my friends live in other places. I am grateful for social media. We can keep in touch much more easily now. It is a good use for social media. But social media in itself is not enough. You need to be there for the people with  whom you wish to be friends.
Friendship is a two way thing.