-Muhammad Ali
I couldn’t wait for yesterday to begin. My best friend Sylvie was home for the weekend, and we had made plans to go out to breakfast, carve pumpkins, and see a movie. I talked to her the night before, and she said she’d be at my house around ten. However, over time I’ve grown to learn Sylvie’s 10:00 is everyone else’s 10:30. Around 11:00 she called, and had overslept. I laughed at her and said I’d head over to her house, that it was no trouble at all, and walked out the door.
On my way to Sylvie’s house, I was in a car accident. A bus was heading straight at my driver’s side, and I pulled my car off to the right side of the road to avoid being hit. Unfortunately, as I pulled over, I was hit by another vehicle. There was an infant in this car, and I felt absolutely devastated. In shock, I rushed out of the car to touch base with the other vehicle, exchanged information, and sat in the passenger seat of my car waiting for the cops to arrive. The first thing that came to mind was to call my parents, however neither of them answered, so I called Sylvie. I needed someone to keep me calm. That girl was completely prepared to run out of her house and drive ten minutes across town to sit with me in the rain, but she didn’t need to. All I needed was to know that someone cared enough to do that for me.
We all have friends. Well, most of us do I hope. They’re the people we go out with on Friday nights or call up when we need someone to talk to; but what makes the difference between a “friend” and a “true friend” or “best friend”? This is one thing I’m starting to figure out as I grow older. Oprah Winfrey once said, “lots of your friends want to ride with you in the limo, what you want is someone to ride the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” Slowly but surely, I’m finding out who would be sitting with me on the bus.
The anniversary of my mom’s best friend’s death is coming up next month, and I know it will be a hard day for her. She and Heather had been best friends since they were eleven years old, and knew everything about each other. She was always like an aunt to us, there for everything from birthdays to confirmations. About 2 years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer of the gallbladder. It was very unexpected, and it took her quickly. She died five months later. What was so inspiring about the whole ordeal was their friendship, how my mom was there for her when she just needed someone to talk to or sit with her. Even though she was so sick, Heather was still there for my mom too, to get her through whatever might have been bothering her at the time. They’d always been like this, keeping the other going, but this was different. That was unconditional love. That’s the kind of friendship many of us long for, but don’t always get to experience. Thinking about my mom and Heather makes me value the friends I have, the ones I know will stick with me for many years to come.
I can look at the crew I spend time with now and know which ones will be standing next to me at my wedding, or standing as godparents to my kids one day, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out which are the limo friends and who will be walking next to me complaining about the trek to the bus stop. We all fight, we say things we probably shouldn’t, and have falling outs, but I know which people are worth my time and effort, and it’s reciprocated. Would I send a care package to Sylvie every week if I wasn’t going to acknowledge her in a few months? Would I get together a “cheer up” card for Jake and have everyone write to him if he was just a passer by? Would I let Taylor have my bed because she couldn’t stand to be at home, if I didn’t love that kid like she was my little sister? No. We’d just hang out every so often on a Friday night and have the most common phrase in the relationship be “i miss you, let’s do lunch sometime.” Friendship is more than taking what you get and running with it, it’s about giving it all you have. It’s not about being there when it’s convenient, but being there when it isn’t. It’s not about knowing what to say, but knowing when you don’t have to say anything. Most importantly, it’s about knowing how to love, even when it seems impossible.
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