Thank You for Being a Friend (with apologies to the Golden Girls)

You don’t really know who’s in your corner until you’re down for the count.

Most of us have lots of “friends”.  We have casual friends and Facebook friends and we toss the word friend around when we really mean acquaintance.  But a real, true friend calls when you need them even when they don’t know what to say.  They just want to show they care.   In my recent case, they’ll listen to every excruciating detail about, say, one’s liver troubles.   They send flowers, they bake cupcakes, they call just because, they offer words of encouragement, they bring good bacteria in tiny capsules to repopulate my intestinal tract!  They do SOMETHING.  That’s what a friend does.

My friends got me through the hospital experience.  (Not to diminish the importance of my Mom, Dad and brother, who were awesome but are almost contractually obligated to be that way!)  You know who you are and I love you to pieces.  My best friend of all, my husband, was a rock upon which I leaned when I felt hopeless – and I did briefly lose hope.  He never did and he wouldn’t hear of me giving up on myself.  As I got better, he brought picnic dinners which we ate in the cafeteria and he kept me laughing even when I thought my sense of humour was gone for good.  My memories of my 2 weeks in hospital are all jumbled up because of a cocktail of drugs and a whirlwind of testing and doctor visits.  But I remember my friends and how very lucky I am to have them.  I’m truly blessed.