When I was a kid, I was accepted by kids I did not like and pushed away by kids I did like. I complained to my grandmother – loudly. Well, dear, she said, if you want to be happy, you have to learn to stand alone. You mean I can’t have friends I asked? She waited for me to calm down and then, this is what she said.

Many years from now when I was very old, Grandma said my dying time would come. There in my last days, or hours, I would reflect upon my life. If I could fill one hand with the names of true friends, I would be very lucky. My grandmother was a wise and honest woman and cautioned me that most people can only count, one or two true friends. Even more astonishing, those friends’ names would not be who I thought they might be, now, when I was young.

But being young, I jumped right in and started listing names. Grandma shook her head, and said I was thinking about this all wrong. This was not about the people who would be on my list. This was about me.

Will your name be on anyone’s list at all – she asked? Ouch. That hurt so bad I ached. I ached because I did not know anyone who would put me on their list.

As always, Grandma had sorted me out and I stopped caring if the kids at school liked me or not. Learning how to be a friend was all that mattered.

Of course, my husband knew all my childhood stories, but he loved my “Grandma always said…” stories the best. When I brought him home, to die, he asked for some time alone. A couple days later, I slipped out of bed and he stopped me. I have my list he said and then just as Grandma had said and done, and just as my mother had done six months earlier, he held up his hand and one finger at a time, he named his friends. Just as Grandma said, they were not the names we would have thought when we were young.

Vows to the living are rarely kept, those we make to the dying are final. I keep these names to myself. However, I will tell you this. The friends people make in life are surprising - for example, a child, parent, employer, teacher, neighbor, someone we only met once, an author, spouse, old friend or someone we hardly knew at all. Sometimes not even one relative is on the list, sometimes its only one, sometimes relatives are the only ones. Sometimes, it’s someone who challenged or hurt us.

You will not know the names on your list for a very, very long time. I think the world would be a kinder place if every one of us, could find our name on someone else’s list.