To distant friends

Friends come and go.

Sometimes with a bang, and sometimes they just drift away. But the appreciation you had for them - back then, when you were friends - doesn't go away. For me, at least, the friends I am no longer in touch with (even if we did go out with a messy bang) are crystallised in my memory.

My best friend from school will always be 15, wearing blue eyeshadow and dancing at an indie nightclub; the boy I fancied when I was eight, now deceased, will always be alive and wearing school shorts; the one friend I remember from school in Brazil is forever four years old, with bright red hair. I don't even remember her surname, or know what she does for a living, or whether she's married and has children, but she's alive in my mind.

Yesterday I found out that another boy I used to have a crush on passed away. (The two facts aren't related - I'm not a conspiracy theorist.) I hadn’t seen him in around 12 years.

He was a neighbour and my friend's brother more than an actual friend. My family lived in the same apartment building as his family in Rio de Janeiro; after we came to the UK, I continued seeing him and his sister, who I was particularly friendly with. His sister and I would spend hours playing with dolls in her room, running around the playground, chewing bubblegum and running away from fat Brazilian cockroaches. In that same concrete playground - on one of those interminable holidays in Brazil - she was the first person to tell me that I was developing a British accent. I was seven years old and it broke my heart; it suddenly dawned that this was not my country any more.

They were the only Brazilian childhood friends I retained for any length of time after leaving the country. Hence, in my mind, despite the fact we only saw each other once a year, there was something about that friendship - something that anchored me to Rio. Increasingly I felt alienated from the country - I had few friends, I spoke Portuguese with an accent and sometimes I forgot words altogether. Going to my neighbours' flat and hanging out with them and their overwhelmingly kind maid (yes, a maid - Brazil is a very different country) made me feel like I belonged.

Our teens arrived and we drifted, despite the fact that I continued to visit their building every year, to stay with my gran. I had thrown myself headfirst into being alternative, having green hair and piercings and dressing like a freak - which drew lots of stares in Rio - while my neighbours seemed like the ordinary, straight-laced, beach-going Brazilian teenagers that I longed to be. Oh, you know, the usual stupid reasons why people stop talking.

We would nod hello, shyly. Then they moved out.

Today I found out that the brother passed away at 31. I do not know what kind of man he grew up to be, but he will always be, in my mind, a lovely-looking boy, with a surfboard under his arm, walking down the Rua Farme de Amoedo to the beach.

Distant friends, like celebrities, never really die – not in your mind.

Image courtesy of Frank Kehren on Flickr.