This is #16 in a series of essays on aging.

My greatest disappointment with friends is that they get sick and die. You want them to stay close and comfortable as an old sweater, but they’re in the hospital and you’re called on to visit them, pray for them, and assist them—not enjoy them. Worse, they are too soon dead and gone.

Friends in old age remind you that it’s all slipping away. That your life is crumbling. Who wants to be reminded of that?

There are other more ordinary disappointments. You find that your old best friend has left his wife and taken up with another woman, and he wants you to think everything is wonderful. Or, a dear friend takes a turn into nutty politics, which you can’t stand to hear about. Old people have temper tantrums, get jealous, act selfishly, and all the other human foibles that ruin friendships. I don’t think these are any more common among older people than in younger ones, but they stand out more at a late stage in life. At 70 or 80 or 90 you’re not making a lot of new lifelong friends; you want the old ones to stay the same. They don’t.

And there is no fool like an old fool.

As a result, old age can be lonely. You may have children who care about you, which brings an unparalleled, beautiful warmth. Children are rarely a substitute for friends, however. They are from a different generation and thus have a different viewpoint on life. They didn’t grow up on the music and the fashion you did. You were already in your thirties or forties when they first tapped into history and politics. A lot that is important to you passed right by them.

Besides, your children have a peculiar relationship with you—wonderful but mixed up with the traumas of surviving adolescence. You didn’t survive it side by side. You survived it as a parent and a child—terribly different points of view. It’s not the same—it can’t be—as an old, good friend.

Yet just when you need them, your friends aren’t there. They move to Florida. They get dementia. They die. And they leave you lonely.

We lean on our friends more than we realize. Though we care about them, we can’t quite see how much we depend on their presence. Yes, we take them for granted.

There’s no helping this, except to work hard not to take them for granted. Friendships can grow stronger even in your eighties or nineties. Some friends will get sick and die; but the ones that carry on with you will be a more powerful source of strength. As for the ones who get sick and die, there’s fellowship in that, too–for you also are dying.

It is still possible at any age to make new friends. They may be people you have hardly paid attention to. Maybe it’s a caregiver. Maybe it’s a neighbor. Maybe it’s the mail carrier. Maybe it’s your pastor. If you are alert to your own need, you’ll be more persistent in reaching out to them. No, they won’t make up for the friends you’ve known for a lifetime. Still, they can plug up the holes of loneliness, and maybe even open new ways of seeing and thinking.

A good question to ask yourself is: have I made any new friends lately?