August 19, 2015: Your have been and will always be.....

     All of us have someone very special in our lives that we consider our closest friend. It might be a buddy that you served in the army with, or a close relative like a sister or parent, but we all have someone that we hold in the highest esteem.
     For me it was my mother. No matter what I was going through, I always knew that I could talk about it with her and trust her to be discreet about who she shared it with. She also never told me what I wanted to hear, which sounds negative but really isn't. I don't know about other people, but I've never been one who wanted a friend that would just agree with me and say things that stroked my ego but were not really helpful. I cherished those friends who told me that I was being stupid and not thinking things through when I was about to make a mistake in my life. If I was about to enter into a poisonous relationship that would scar me for years to come, I don't need someone cheering me on with bad advice.
     Mom always laid it out for me. There was a girl who was physically attractive to me, but had other traits that made her a pretty poor candidate for a life partner. Blinded by the physical, I told mom that I was thinking about marriage. She quickly told me, "Oh, you don't want to do that!" She didn't even offer any reasons for her comment, but I knew that her instincts were almost always right. I came to my senses and moved on shortly after that discussion.
     I have friends that have been with me for a lot of years. I met Mikel Coulter in Junior High somewhere around fifty-three years ago, and he and I still talk all the time. He lives just down the highway from me in Worthington, Ohio. I've known Joe Kyle for about fifty years now, and we trades comments on Facebook all the time. He's a lot farther away in Duncanville, Texas, about thirteen hours from me. Finally, there is Wayne McCuan (and his wife Diane) whom I've known for forty-six years and still talk to on the phone from time to time. He lives down in Houston, and I sometimes get to visit him when I go down to see my family there.
     I think about the deep friendship portrayed in Star Trek between Captain James T. Kirk and First Officer Spock. In "The Wrath of Khan", Spock sacrificed his life for the benefit of the crew. As he was dying, he told Kirk something to the effect of, "You have been and always will be my friend." That is so much the way that I feel about these three brothers that God sent me to take the place of the brothers that I never had. There is history with each one that is treasured and will stay with me forever.
     When mom died, it left a huge void for me that I thought would never be filled. My closest confidant in the world was gone, and I was only twenty-five years old. There were so many questions and decisions that I had that needed her input, and now I would have to face them alone. If not for God, I would not known how to continue. He raised up others in my life to take mom's place and guide me, and somehow, I got through it all.
     Every once in a while, I hear someone voice the one thing that troubles me the most when I think about mom now. I can't remember the sound of her voice. Someone so precious to me, whom I spent years with, and I don't recall what she sounded like. With all the tape recorders I had around for my music, I can't believe that I never thought about recording her. Truthfully, I never thought she would be gone from my life like that.
     Those who pass on to the next life are never really gone from us, though. Even now, nearly forty years after her death, I'll find myself in a situation and remember something that mom used to do or say, and I'll feel the warmth of her presence surrounding me. My life has been good, and there have been so many times when things went so much better than I could have expected, and I knew that someone was watching over me. God blesses me, and I wish what he's given to me for everyone I know.