He had long thought of this journey. Previously, he had considered it would be with his friend. Life intervened, with the passage of time slowly ruling this out. In any case, his friend would no longer be that same companion of the past. Now he actually saw his friend infrequently, although periodic communications remained. He had warm memories of animated discussions, books read, politicians derided, sporting teams that could have, and should have won, had coaches only taken their insightful advice. Commonalities had decreased, pathways differed, shared interests less vital. Still, he was utterly confident that friend and friendship remained the correct words, the accurate descriptors of an enduring relationship. In different cities, lengthening years, death for both closer, an opportunity even for an hour coffee and catch up was always taken.

This journey took him from his home in his leafy suburb and, as good fortune would have it, a few hours stopover in the place where his friend lived. The good fortune continued, because his time of arrival would be after his friend had finished his life time ritual. He was aware of his friend’s ritual, his daily dawn with his god, a daily encounter, a daily renewal, a daily reinforcement of his work, the granite on which his life was based. Alone, or with others, it made little difference, the ritual, the sacred was his friend’s daily permanent.

This ritual, the sacred, had been with his friend for all of his adult life. It had its birth earlier, nurtured by his friend’s believing parents, reinforced by the particularities of his school, and encouraged by those already practicing, those already permitted to perform the ritual. His friend’s late adolescent decision to accept what was termed a ‘priestly calling’, brought training and education in the ways of the ritual. It ended with the public affirmation by men, clothed in sacred vestments, varying in colors determined by hierarchy. The procession in the church was solemn, mirrored and repeated in processions of hundreds of years. Present were proud parents, beaming siblings and others attracted by the once a year ceremony. His friend was ordained, a priest forever, the ritual was his to be cherished, treasured and practiced, not for one life time, but for eternity.

From that public affirmation, from the moment his friend turned from man to priest, from that to the present, his friend’s life was forever coupled to a truth. This truth required belief, faith, a certain conduct, all laid out in the huge volumes of canons painstakingly compiled, developed, debated, scrutinized and approved over centuries, all affirming this special truth. It came from the unfolding of the finest minds, the most meticulous scholarship, the most rigorous of examination. That should have been sufficient to establish certainty. But, to allay any doubt, it was apparently underwritten by none other than god. Here, therefore was that truth and it was that which made his friend’s ritual so holy, so sacred.

The venue of their past two meetings allowed him to observe his friend in the ritual. He watched out of respect not belief, a courtesy absent conviction. His friend was slower, took more time robing, concentration more required, deliberation not quite masking the inconsequential misplacement, the loss of place in that holy book. But the intensity, the sense of the sacred, the presence of his god never diminished. Their hour or so of coffee and chat would need to wait until after his friend had once again performed the ritual, met his god.

By multiple measuring rods, this friend was a good man. He respected his integrity but remained puzzled by his beliefs, suspicious of convictions, rejecting of his friend’s certainty that the ritual was eternal. After all their years of friendship, of conversation and discussion, he still could not quite grasp this man whom he continued to call his friend.

For the moment, as his taxi arrived at the agreed coffee shop, this was not the time, nor the place for dwelling on such matters. This was an opportunity for another pleasant, if brief, encounter with this old friend. Neither of them enjoyed the cold except that it enhanced the warmth of the coffee shop. Warmth, that instant aroma, the immediate recognition, always an embrace, not just a hand shake. The first few minutes were always focused on the plethora of choice. Decades past, they just went to a coffee shop, for a coffee and bun or raisin toast with jam and butter. Now, neither was sure where they were, suspecting that they might actually be in a patisserie. Nevertheless, he always enjoyed buying for his friend, sparing no expense on an assortment of pastries, croissants, cinnamon rolls and one unknown as an experiment. The choice for pastries faded in comparison to the variety of coffees and the extraordinary milk selection. Both feared that any attempt to expand beyond their habitual orders would take most of their available time. Repeated back, order confirmed, number given, any table, quick look, with both agreeing the table at the window would be best.

There is a thing about meeting true, real friends. His friend was one of those where conversation simply resumed from the last time. He counted himself fortunate since he had a number of such friends. He always found it remarkable that the time between meetings mattered little. There was never an uneasiness, never a delay, never a hesitation. Conversation simply resumed.

While time rarely disrupted conversation, it did amplify change. For those whose shared time is consistent, frequent, routine, change can go unnoticed for months, even years. For those whose time shared is infrequent, the changes are immediately visible, accepted for the most part as the partner of age. He was not so certain.

In the past two meetings there were also hints of what, in this coffee shop meeting, disturbed their conversation. His friend had developed, or perhaps had thrust upon him, an unnerving ability for not blinking, often for long periods. He knew that repeated blinking, lack of eye contact, was sometimes a characteristic of the nervous. He had no knowledge of the opposite. He found himself repeatedly examining the pastries, seeking momentary relief from his friend’s direct, unwavering, unblinking eye gaze. While his eyes flicked from coffee cup, to Danish, to window, to waiter, his friend’s eyes never wavered. Life brings difficult, embarrassing questions. The probability of him asking his friend about this awkward, acquired eye habit, was zero.

Still he much preferred this conversation to some of the past. In one, eye contact was not the issue. His female acquaintance had acquired the remarkable physiological capacity of incessant talking without breath. He heard her, never listened, but peered for evidence that might unlock the mystery to this phenomenon. Was she proof of an evolutionary life branch that required no oxygen? Accompanying this oxygen free monologue was her really annoying habit of answering questions directed to her husband. The poor man, intelligent, well read, professional, often just sat mute. When he did answer, the all-knowing one was certain to add or correct. An alternative explanation for the husband’s muteness was that he was just never fast enough to respond in those milliseconds between a question directed to him and the answer from her.

In other conversations it was the opposite. He had an acquaintance who was the master of the frustratingly long intentional pause between sentences. Pauses that did not invite contribution or intervention. They were placed to give the kidnapped, the cornered listener time to absorb the profundity, to appreciate erudition, to marvel at the story so beautifully crafted, so splendidly told by the self-designated master story teller. Sitting, hearing the audible equivalent of the cosmic background radiation, he often thought that there must be a measurable, statistical relationship between age and embellishment. Stories were not repeated. They expanded, produced new characters, contained ever more scintillating repartee. They invariably ended in favour of the story teller as the link between reality and story grew evermore tenuous.

These were not the ways of this coffee patisserie meeting. He managed the eye awkwardness. They updated each other on family and mutual friends. Briefly, only briefly, did they enquire about health and ailments. Both had been permanently, repeatedly cruelly scarred by responses to that simple, polite question – how are you? Both assumed compliance with the social norm. The answer to the seemingly innocuous only required, Fine! They had both been victim to the violation of this social norm.

For example, some months before this pleasant coffee shop meeting, he had made a serious error at a regular reunion of people from his past. Some he knew well, others only vaguely. Still, the reunion lunches provided a nice opportunity to hear of roads travelled since that past shared time. On this occasion he failed to give sufficient attention to the dining seating arrangements. He expected some sharing of the personal from those he knew well. From those he knew vaguely he expected the pleasant, but less the personal. Certainly not the intimate. It was not until he was seated that he was aware of the vaguely known one to his right. They exchanged polite, customary greetings. Having no real familiarity, he had no great anticipation of their conversation expecting it would be shared with others in close table proximity. He was captured instantly, and exclusively, by the vaguely known one. While others were close, particularly his friend on the left, there was no possibility of escape. What he anticipated as perhaps a six way lunch conversation became one way. Stupidly he asked about the vaguely known one’s health. He was spared no detail. The prostate operation had been successful but the sexual dysfunction that followed had strained the marriage. They were nevertheless together and experimenting. He responded with a non-eye contact nod, focusing intently on his remaining potato wedges. He hoped never to meet the wife, never having to shake her hand knowing the tasks that had been allocated to it. He would die never understanding what compelled such intimate disclosure. But he felt somewhat confident of being able to perform a prostate operation if required.

In the warmth of this coffee shop and, by the time they had finished their first coffee and pastry, he knew of his friend’s impending retirement. There was some uncertainty about the future, but it would rest on ritual and church, his institution. His friend would move, settling elsewhere but only after a much anticipated sabbatical. It would be his fourth and last sabbatical with a final decision on place and type yet to be made. It would be somewhere in community with likeminded, like situated others. He was never convinced that his friend needed this. Teaching, guidance, inspiration, consolation, these had been his friend’s life for decades. Since little more could be added, he concluded this was more departure, a closure point, a few months of transition from where his priest friend had been for decades to where he might go in the future. The time away would be part sabbatical, part rest, part reflection and part planning for something yet to be explored, not yet known.

He admired these things about his friend. The intelligence, the periodic renewals, the habitual reading, and that odd addiction to murder mysterious and spy novels. His friend’s regular, serious reading was no different to that of many others being mostly a reinforcement of things already believed, of that truth so central to his existence. The centrality of that truth prevented his friend from being too critical, from too much questioning. Only occasionally, and always at the margins. In the past they would discuss and debate the merits of that truth. His friend’s defense, justification and advocacy was always fervent, more so with age. But he never found it persuasive, was never convinced, even more so with age.

He sometimes wondered about all of this. Wondered whether his priest friend doubted, whether he had grown silently suspicious, whether he ever considered that his life may be grounded in falsity, a sojourn through myth and magic. But he concluded this not to be the case. This truth they had once discussed was not just at the core of his priest friend, it was the core. At this stage of his friend’s life it could not be abandoned, could not be rejected. To do so would have been a negation of what had gone before. Not a negation of good things done, for they would stand. But they would need to stand alone, without foundation, without some ultimate reason. In the scheme of things that was never going to be.

His friend’s life, grounded in that truth, was expressed in a service and commitment to others. It was this that he admired. The priestly life had its moments of joy welcoming the newly born with an immersion, and declaring the loving couple married. In service, his friend was one of those who now didn’t care about the couple’s prelude to marriage. That had been put aside, and it was not uncommon for him to marry those who had lived together. Like so much, unthinkable, fatally sinful a few years previous, times had changed. The truth rules remained, but interpretative scope was increasingly applied. Interpretation not acceptance, disapproval without admonishment. This allowed his priest friend now to welcome those who only a few decades ago had been excluded, had been called ugly vile names. And, like every job there was the mundane, the administration, the quirkiness of the old and ageing faithful who still came, the voluntary unpaid cleaner, the tradesperson without invoice, the ladies arranging the flowers. But there were the concerns, the increasing rarity of a full church attendance, the evidence of something in steep decline.

Mundane, joy, happiness, concern found their counterparts in sorrow, tragedy and death. Here his friend saw and comforted those devastated, those lost, those grieving, those sorrowful but who he encouraged to accept. It was possible to see and comfort the devastated, but sharing, really knowing grief, was difficult and mostly beyond his friend, and indeed beyond others. His friend could add something, drawn tragically from the early life experiences of a long gone sister. That, at the time, had emptied him. There was something there to draw on. But his job was hard when it was a three year old gone, a tiny grave, balloons instead of flowers, parents numbed, hugging the empty older child. The gone never let go. For this type of gone, all his friend could do was to perform the ceremony, offer the words, and softly mention the mysteries of the ways of his god. It was not always like this, not always explaining the tragic, not always the mother gone with early cancer or the freakish accident. There were the endless visits to the sick who recovered, left hospital and continued life. There were the others where sharing, comfort, even happiness, was easier. Those who had been together, who had enjoyed longevity, who had time to prepare, to say goodbye and, in time would remember with nostalgia, but absent from grief and sorrow. Services remembered for the noise and play of the grandchildren, of a life abundant.

In all this he saw a genuine person, serving unstintingly, accepting what the day brought and providing the comfort promised in his truth.

He wondered what it might take to decouple his friend from the institution, the church that he had surrendered to at that time of the procession years before. That would be difficult, given its claim to be the divinely appointed, exclusive guardian of his truth. He suspected that his friend had, in some ways, reached a small, modest decoupling. This was evident in the departures from the strictures of directives on how ceremonies were to be done. Such departures being a sign of compromise, an accommodation to modernity. It pleased some, but for others, the bigoted zealots, it signaled the beginning of the end, the slow inexorable slide to a decayed world. The bigoted zealots saw institutional smoke, fire on the way, unafraid to call some forms of love depraved, an abomination, the zealots knew their role. They were utterly, uncompromisingly certain. This slide, his friend’s compromise, would eventually corrupt the truth, pervert the dogma meticulously shaped over centuries. These bigoted zealots issued warnings that life after corruption would, to say the least, be wicked, dire. They had no evidence, but that was never a reason to stop their indignant self-righteous voices, their secret opposition. Since the church institution guards the truth, so must they, the truth holders, the bigoted zealots, guard this institution. His priest friend was aware of the zealots and, through personality and artfulness managed to please almost all, for most of the time, in most of the situations. Total success was never possible since compromise, tolerance, understanding, especially compassion, were not traits of the bigoted zealots. His friend would never leave, never decouple because of these.

If not the zealots then what? He speculated what, if anything, might result in a complete decoupling, a rejection by his friend of church, institution. Others had. Some because age and maturity had simply led them to skepticism, incredulity, leaving. That was not for his friend. Even revelations of appalling misconduct, of criminality, of exploitation, abuse of position, defilement of the innocent, vested interest coverups, none of these were enough. Astonishment, revulsion, derision with no attempt to defend the indefensible. His friend experienced all this, and more, as his institution blurred into an unrecognizable thing. It offended, but not quite enough to compel decoupling. There was always something which allowed his friend to rebuild trust, however damaged, to remain, however betrayed. He wondered about this refusal to leave, but never condemned, never criticized, and only mildly discussed. That was not for everyone, for those inclined to harsh, even dismissive judgments, who said remaining meant support, staying implied complicity. But he accepted that his friend was forever glued. There was little choice, no need for one, simply accept the glue.

He wondered about the fairness of the self-appointed judges. Those who would demand his friend leave this institution. Did they understand this glue, appreciate the coupling? His friend’s coupling was a few decades old, but the recipe for the glue had been centuries in the making. The power of this, and other glues, was common. The glues were found across and down the ages, in institutions, churches, temples, mosques, and the multiplicity of places where deities in all shapes, mysterious, and unknowable, demanded the extraordinary. His friend’s glue was just one of thousands. It was unfair to ask him to decouple, without applying the similar harshness to all those others coupled and glued.

Those who judged with harshness seemed not to see that glue and coupling were in fact everywhere. Would they demand decoupling because of one infidelity in a forty year marriage? What of several mistresses, but evenly spaced? What if the DNA unmasks secrets? What if the incestuous Uncle was welcomed back to family? The outsider’s judgement is always easy. The glued are stuck. There is no prescription, no certainty, no constellation of factors and events which signal the end. There is no set formula. Some conceal, fearful of disclosure. The coward, never giving the other the truth. Their marriage rests on a never revealed lie. What for one is so overwhelming, so destructive as to break the glue, to decouple, is not so for another. What for one is terminal, is negotiable for the other. What for one is the extinction of integrity, is for discussion. The list is endless, salacious stuff for common discussion, an orgy for moral philosophers, ethicists and day time television dramas.

A second coffee and pastry, he sensed his friend was tired, ready, welcoming change with a detachment. He admired his friend’s detachment. The vagaries of arrivals and departures, of comings and goings, of starts and finishes, of continuances and interruptions were met with calmness. His core remained the ritual, his institution enduring before and beyond his time and place. His friend welcomed the next stage with trust fostered over decades.

His friend would be missed, but not mourned. At the farewell, he would be praised by others but there would be no void. There would be a gift and generous donation towards the sabbatical. In time, others would decide on the use of his modest bedroom. The office which had consumed his endless hours would remain much the same. There would be a review as to the continuance of some activities. Little of this would concern his friend. It was simply his time.

There were times in their conversations when his friend expressed his disappointment and disillusionment with his institution. Clearly events tested, but never broke the link with his church, the institution. Nothing like this ever emerged in their relatively rare conversations about his ritual. The institution, the church was important. The ritual, the sacred, was utterly central. It was this that explained the calmness, the peace, the detachment. It was the deepest, unconditional trust in the promise of the ritual. It was a nuanced subtlety. Faithfulness to the ritual came with guarantees. For his friend it was the faithfulness that mattered, the guarantees and promises were incidental, but there was certainty they would come later. His friend had described this faithfulness explaining it as the source of his motivation. However, it still remained that his friend knew that he would never die. He would, at some point, simply transform. The ritual would continue in mysterious clarity. His faithfulness to the sacred, rewarded.

His friend’s certainty was extended in promises and guarantees to others. These were in the words that assured the grieving that separation at death was temporal. The child would be held again, the husband seen, mother and daughter reunited, suffering had ended, there was now a better place. The words varied for different occasions but the message resolute. His friend’s unswerving conviction, the convincing assurances to others were a constant source of frustration.

He could accept almost everything about his priest friend. But this assurance to others was more than a puzzlement, it annoyed. An annoyance that was now new, not limited to his friend. He had observed that for centuries, millennium, eons, for the duration of the human, that death had been bathed in self-indulgent lies. His species, he often thought, was insatiable. A superiority over everything else was assumed, a preciousness endlessly confirmed by strange, mainly men, in peculiar attire.

His wonderment about death was not particularly special. He could recall his first wonderments, beginning as a child, and again, nothing special, since all young children share that wonderment which is rarely properly explained by the denying or avoiding adults. His first wonderment came from an old grey horse in a paddock near the place of his grandmother. He did not love the horse since he saw it only on those twice yearly visits to his grandmother. But he liked the horse, its smokey coloured eyes, and the way it would always come in the hope of grass. He picked the grass but was just a bit too frightened to let the horse feed from his small hand. He wanted to, but at the last minute, the grass was always dropped. At about the time when he reached five years old the horse was not in the paddock. His grandmother explained that the horse had died, it was buried in the paddock and she pointed to a spot under an old tree. He thought it was sad but that it was also nice for the horse to still be in the paddock and to have shade in summer and the dirt as warmth. Over the years he thought about the horse and his grandmother, the simplicity of her telling and that there was something nice about the horse just being reabsorbed by the earth.

His second wonderment was less simple. About one year later, at six, for reasons never known, he was with his mother at the side of a dying Great Aunt. He never knew the Great Aunt, and it took him years to unravel the idea of Great. He could not recall just how he came to be alone with her. But his memory told him that the Great Aunt’s hospital bed had some plastic thing, and white tucked sheets. Two chairs, and a row all the same in a strange, dim place. His vague reconstruction of events was that his mother had to attend to natural demands and used that time to get a cup of tea. So mundane. His mother, away five minutes at the most, her boy can’t come, the Great Aunt sleeping, unconscious. The mother could never have anticipated the Great Aunt’s sudden, shuddering noises lasting for a minute, terrifying a six year old mind and echoing for ages.

Not long after, just days, he remembered a man in a long black dress with a white collar coming to the house where his parents and relatives had gathered with food and drink. The man in the long black dress only stayed a little while and told everyone that the Great Aunt had gone to a better place and was living in a new home. He could not understand this and was about to ask his mother how the Great Aunt got out of bed and where was her new home. But his cousin poked her tongue at him, and they went out chasing one another.

His grandmother’s simplicity had been replaced by the myth and the magic. Now, many decades past, a long way from the child of five and six, he had concluded that his was a grasping species, always wanting more, always elevating itself to some higher plain, always demanding comfort, never accepting extinction. This superiority claiming species appeared perfectly at ease accepting the most ludicrous of claims. The spoilt baby demanding comfort.

Now he knew that his priest friend gave the same identical comfort to the distressed as that man in a long black dress with a white collar had given about the Great Aunt. Identical, because while the age and times might differ, formulations might vary, ceremonies might diverge, bodies might be buried, or devoured by carrions, widows thrown onto the husband’s pyre, it was always the same. Not dead, well dead, but not gone, deceased but living, separated but reunited, not here but elsewhere, departing and arriving, old form but new form, leaving daughter and finding mother, departing friends, renewing friends, all explained as mystery. It was the stuff of the human, the marrow within this species.

He thought by now there would be a realization of the absurdity. By now an acceptance of enough. Not for his friend. Not ever for his friend. Absurdity could not be. He understood. In much earlier times he debated, discussed and even challenged suggesting that dead is dead, gone is gone, there is no finding of the loved one who is gone. Now he left it. There was no point, only annoyance and perhaps distress. Still he wondered about his friend’s promises to others, the guarantees, the comfort. He thought it to be a deceit, betrayal, even a wickedness.

Their goodbye was warm, he wished his friend well for the Sabbatical, all the best for the next few months. Waiting for his taxi he had time to observe his departing friend. He wondered how many more meetings they might have, or if this was to be the last. Long ago they had shared a vision of a common journey. That had well gone along with their plan for any other journey. He could see why, as his friend walked slowly away the once athletic, agile body slowed and slouched by age. His friend returned for his final few weeks to the all too familiar office. The taxi arrived taking him alone to the airport.