The Journey of Friendship

There are not enough truly brave people in the world.

We have more than our share of heros - 911 comes to mind - but the everyday brave people, the people who struggle each day to show up and do their best despite the odds....they don't make headlines. My friend Tricia is one of those people. She lost her parents and only sister in a tragic car accident when she was in school. She survived cancer and then lost her husband to it. She's brought three children, all shining and strong, into adulthood.


We don't spend as much time together as we used to - we have separate lives and obligations, lots of common interests but lots of different ones as well. We're older and wiser, at least we hope so, but we still share mutual friends and enemies, we both like life to be little on the solitary side, we remember needlepointing and weekends at the lake and trips to market and dinners with friends. We remember when there four of us ... when there were red beans and rice parties and crawfish boils. Life, however, is not stagnant. We grow, adapt, change, reevaluate and move on. Children change us, divorce changes us and
death changes us. But still we stay connected, Tricia and I, connected and grounded.

Through the years that we've known each other, we've worked together often and unlikely as it seems, always managed to do it successfully. She has children, I have none. She saves everything, I save nothing. She likes to cook, I rely on fast food. She reads paperbacks, I read hardbacks. She knows every back road and will stop at nothing to avoid a traffic light. I travel at right angles. She embraces technology and I resist it. She's perpetually late and last minute, I'm hopelessly early and too well prepared. She drinks Dr. Pepper, I drink diet Coke. She's not a morning person and I am. She likes quiet and I like noise. I read British novels and she has no use for them.

Friendship is a product of shared experience, of commonalities and differences blended togther. When someone knows your sins and secrets and loves you anyway, you won't find a better friend.