My mother just days ago lost her very best friend to cancer. I had met this wonderful woman my mother referred to as "the sister I never had." She was delightful - beautiful both inwardly and outwardly.  This is yet another good friend my mother has known who has died too soon from cancer. Obviously the immediate family members of her friend miss their mother, wife, aunt, grandmother, sister and cousin more deeply than my mother.

But every time I saw them together, they were smiling and joking with one another like teen-age girls.  In talking with my mother she made a very powerful point be known to me.  She told me that her friend's two sons both thanked her for staying with their dying mother everyday for the past several weeks.  She graciously accepted their gratitude but she also made the following statements to both of her friend's grieving sons on two separate occasions: "You don't need to thank me for what I know your mother would have done for me.  Your mother blessed my life in so many ways, and I will never forget the times we shared and the many laughs we had."

Friends, true friends, love each other unconditionally and do not keep records of who bought who lunch or whose turn it is to drive.  My mother's friend, one individual, touched so many lives and taught my mother (not the other way around) what being a true friend is all about.  We should all hope to be this kind of friend.  Being a good friend does not make us saints, it merely solidifies the fact that we are caring human-beings.

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