Friends

FRIENDS

Friends, friendship…I don’t know that there is anything that affects us in more ways than do the people who touch our lives and become friends, friends for a short time or for a lifetime.  I have and have had lots of friends but one friend stands out above all the rest.  Her name was Bonnie and we were friends from grade school to the day she died just a few years ago.  Our friendship spanned more than sixty years and though it had its ups and downs we never ceased to be friends, not for a moment.  We didn’t always understand each other.  We didn’t always like or approve of what the other did but we were always there for each other and always friends through an entire lifetime of days, through sunshine and storm.

A friend, according to the Oxford American Dictionary is “A person with whom one is on terms of mutual affection and respect.”  Friends bring quality into our life and qualify our being.  Friendship is “the act of showing kindness, interest and goodwill toward another; one who is friendly,” according to the dictionary.  This, I think, pretty well sums it up, puts friend and friendship in a nutshell but if you have ever known a true and lasting friendship, it doesn’t begin to explain it.  True friends are often closer than a brother or a sister.  They become part of who you are.

Friendships usually begin with common interest and personality traits, common beliefs, whether cultural, social, political or religious.  Bonnie’s and my friendship began back in the lower grades of grade school when our teacher paired us up for a school project and we had to make a collage of various leaves and we both discovered how much we liked and enjoyed the world of nature and that we both liked to read and write and to draw.  From there our friendship blossomed and kept right on blooming until the day she died.  As time went on we discovered a lot more things we had in common and we discovered our differences too but because we had developed a mutual affection and respect, a trust, those differences only served to enhance our friendship.  Bonnie and I could agree to disagree on an issue and still respect each other for our strengths and convictions.  We always loved the person even if we didn’t like or agree with the opinion or action and more often than not just simply didn’t understand.  That is true friendship.