Johnsy's eyes were wide open. For days he had been looking out the window and counting... counting backwards.

"Twelve," he said, a little later, "eleven," then "ten," two hours later "nine," then "eight," then "seven" ...

Sue looked out with curiosity mixed with worry. What was there to count? All that was visible was a bleak empty courtyard and the bare wall of a brick house six or seven meters away. An old, old vine tree, rotten from its gnarled roots, climbed halfway up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stripped it of its leaves, leaving the vine almost bare, clinging to the crumbling bricks with its skeletal branches. "What are you counting, Johnsy?" asked Sue. "Six," said Johnsy, almost in a whisper. "They're falling fast now, three days ago there were nearly a hundred, it was hard to count, but now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now. When the last one falls, I'll leave for sure. I've known it for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?

"Sue shushed him with a sassy smile." But the doctor said the chances of recovery were one in ten. That's the same odds we had riding the streetcar in New York. And what's the connection between a vine leaf and your recovery? Now go on, make an effort, have a little soup, and I'll finish my painting and sell it to my client tomorrow and bring you some ribs and fresh fruit."

"You don't need to buy any more fruit," said Johnsy, without taking his eyes off the outside.

"There goes another one, so that leaves four. I want to see the last one down by morning and then I'll go."

Sue leaned over the bed and said, "Johnsy, darling. I have to leave early in the morning, I have a lot of work to do. Let's go to sleep now." She closed the curtain.

"Open the curtain when you leave in the morning," Johnsy said, closing his eyes as he lay still, white as a fallen statue. "Because I want to see the last leaf fall. I'm tired of waiting."

When Sue woke up the next day, she hurriedly looked out of the open window and saw only a single yellowed vine leaf swaying, and she thought that today the last leaf would fall and she would be gone. Even the morning rain mixed with lightning and thunder could not bring down this last leaf, and she looked at it in amazement. He watched it all day, but it did not fall.

When he woke up the next morning, it was still there. Johnsy again watched the last leaf all day with mixed feelings of amazement and hope. It was still there, firm and resolute.

Days passed, the leaf was still there, and as the leaf stayed there, Johnsy's eyes brightened and his appetite began to improve.

Towards evening the doctor came to check on him and happily announced that Johnsy was on the mend and that he was free. Overjoyed with this news, Johnsy asked his doctor if he had seen his best friend Sue, whom he wanted to share his joy with, as he had not seen her for days.

"I guess the nurses didn't tell you so you wouldn't get upset. A few days ago, she was painting a leaf on the vine in the garden when she caught a cold and fell in the garden. When they found him in the morning he had pneumonia. Unfortunately, we lost him a few hours later, I'm sorry."

Apart from this famous story by O. Henry, books have been written and drawn about friendship. Sometimes it was confused with friendship. Sometimes we thought the people we shared pleasant moments with were friends, sometimes the ones we met three days ago. Even the mechanical and false friendships of the fiber world, which is the madness of the age. Virtual friendships with people who do not touch the soul, touch the human being, or even touch your eyes, human friendships related to self-alienation and stemming from antisocial disorder...

However, friendship lasts a lifetime, it is the one who is with us in the most beautiful moments as well as in difficult times and loneliness. Even if it is not with its physical body, it is with its spiritual, mental, emotional body. It is a phenomenon that we experience with only one or two people in a lifetime.

Even if they are far away like the stars, they appear in the darkness. The one who pulls us into the deepest depths and darkness of our souls. Like the sun, its presence illuminates our days. Like the sycamore tree, standing and waiting there, exactly where it is... Like the harbor, waiting for us to hide in storms...

The one who does not "cut his conscience short" as is the fashion these days, who never sells it, who protects it to the death...

As Can Yücel said:
"Friends are like rivers,
Some have less water, some have more
Some only get your hands wet,
In some, your soul is washed throughout".

Mukaddes Pekin Başdil

Researcher-Author

Source: Denizli Haber