What's it take to be a true friend?

I've long believed that when you lay down to take your final breath, if it takes more than the fingers on one hand to count the true friends you've had throughout your entire life, you are truly a blessed person. The longer I live, the more I see "friends" come and go, the more I believe that.

We all think we have many more friends than we really do because most of us don't understand the true meaning of friendship. We often mistake "buddies" for friends, or neighbors for friends or teammates for friends or co-workers for friends or a thousand other possible relationships we could define as friends and, in most cases, we would be wrong.

There's a line from an old Fleetwood Mac song that says "Players only love you when you're playing."

Another way of saying that is that it's easy to be a "friend" when the going is good, when everything is OK, when we're operating in our comfort zone. But it's amazing sometimes how "friends" disappear when we need them the most, when we're most in need of having a friend. Because when we find ourselves in that situation, it requires an action on the part of our friend; it requires them to actually "do" something that often involves them getting out of their own comfort zone. That's when we find out the truth.

We see this happen when peoples' marriages break up, when they lose a job, when they're accused of a crime, when they get sick, when they're hospitalized or institutionalized, or even when it's no longer "popular" to be their friend. When any situation like this occurs that requires us to actually do something to show our friendship, many of us go AWOL. An old saying goes "A friend in need is a friend indeed," because this is when so many of our so-called friends disappear.

Unfortunately, if we never have a crisis in our life, many of us will never know who our true friends are because no one has to step up and demonstrate their friendship. The crisis in my life occurred the morning I found out about Brandon's (my oldest son) death. The Marines standing in my living room told me they weren't allowed to leave until I had someone to stay with me. I gave them Pete Smith's name and number and they called him and asked him to come to my place, not telling him why he was needed.

He was there in a heartbeat. I don't know how he got there so fast. He stayed until Rhonda came and she stayed for most of the rest of the day. Gina and Tammy brought over lunch for us. These four people demonstrated their friendship when it counted the most without it being demanded by me or even asked for. They did it because they were truly my friends.

But time also changes existing friendships. Friendships that we think will last a lifetime somehow don't. People you thought would be an intimate part of your life forever end up not being a part of your life at all. Temporary friendships are common, permanent friendships are rare. And like love, you can't demand or insist or "make" someone be your friend. They either are or they're not. And because they are today doesn't mean they will be tomorrow. Some of us find that out the hard way. We often look back and wonder what happened and seldom if ever do we have a satisfying answer. They used to be and now they're not.

When we look at the fragile and transitory nature of friendships, it doesn't seem so strange when we see how some people make over their pets. Some people treat them almost as if they were human. They dress them and cater to them and treat them better than they do most humans and many people laugh and make fun of this kind of behavior.

But the reason they act like this is that pets make better friends than most humans ever could. Pets are loyal, true, and will love you and always be by your side, regardless of what you do. Wouldn't it do so much for our self-concept if a friend or lover or spouse acted like a dog does every time you leave the house and come back home?

Whether it's minutes later or days later, a dog is simply overjoyed to see us again. And because they are loving, true, and loyal to us, we treat them the same. I was talking to a good friend today about playing golf this afternoon and in the middle of our conversation, he began to weep and told me that his dog of 17 years had died this morning in his arms and that he had lost his best friend.

I remember feeling the same way when my dog died. She was not only my friend, she was a member of the family and the loss was heartbreaking. It's too bad most humans don't have the same capacity for loyalty, devotion, love, and protection that animals do. Maybe, in fact, the capacity IS there, but most people never realize it. In fact, most never even reach for it.

So friends come and friends go. Sometimes it seems we have many, some times few, sometimes we're convinced we don't have any.

Regardless of our current situation, we don't know if our friends of today will still be our friends tomorrow.

They can turn on us like a pack of wolves. The only two friends I'm absolutely certain of, the only two people on the planet who have always been my best friends and always will be are my sons. They are the loves of my life. They are my buddies. We are cut from the same cloth. We have always been there for each other and we always will be, all the way to death's door and beyond.

No other friendships in my life are certain. Michael and Williams' are.