I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age he wanted to be an Episcopal priest because he so admired his priest a black man from someplace called Haiti.
A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely.