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07/06/2004: "Across the Miles"

My friend, who is over eighty, heard his friend was seriously ill in Indiana and planned a quick trip out to see him. It has been several decades since my friend lived in Indiana, but the friendship had survived the years. My mother kept her friendships alive and flourishing from her childhood, through all of life and into age and its end. This was her greatest gift, and her rarest, as well; and I hope and pray that I have inherited it, at least in part. My brothers do not seem to have kept up their old friendships, nor has my father; I do have friends from school days, and from college, but too much time passes between contacts. The love remains. My friend's friend died before he could depart; he and his wife will be back in a week.