Month: January 2021

When I worked in the grocery store flower shop, I would occasionally lend customers a bucket so they could more easily transport a vase of flowers in their car. I asked them to return the bucket the next time they came back. We had a tall stack of cheap buckets, so I didn’t keep track of how many I’d given out or who I’d given them to.  

A customer who I didn’t even remember returned a bucket one day and apologized for the delay. She said it took her so long to return it because she was staying with her best friend who had died a couple days earlier. They met in first grade and had been friends for 66 years! That sounds so rare nowadays. She told me how they were there for each other over the years and during each of their divorces. Her friend got cancer. After the customer left, I was thinking how that’s the kind of friend I want to have. Of course, that’s the also kind of friend I would have to BE. I don’t think I would qualify right now. 

My last post talked about celebrating both large and small milestones in the lives of your friends. I have to admit that, besides birthdays and holidays, I don’t know when any milestones or special occasions are coming up in other people’s lives, because I haven’t been keeping in touch with them often enough or having deep enough conversations to learn what’s happening and what’s important them.  

The good news is, we always have the option to course correct.  

Many years ago, when I heard a friend was getting surgery on a certain day, I mailed a card so it would arrive the afternoon of the surgery. She called later to thank me and sounded thrilled.  

Through the years, I’ve had ideas for other nice gestures- sending flowers to someone who just had a baby, mailing a silly dollar store toy to a friend who was feeling down, sending a card to mark the anniversary of a death, calling to congratulate someone on a milestone- but then I got tired or lazy or “busy” (but apparently not too busy to watch stand-up comedy on YouTube), and I didn’t execute the ideas.  

Sometimes I’m not aware of any recourse except my own guilty feelings. But other times, without knowing about my good intentions and lack of following through, the potential recipient may confide that they felt alone or stressed on the day that my good deed would have occurred. And then I kick myself because that small action could have made a real difference to them.  

I’ve learned that, if you have an idea to do something thoughtful for another person, it’s always worth the effort to do it. If nothing else, at least you know you did the best you could.  

What’s the point of having a great idea if you don’t act on it? What are we all here for together, if not to help each other along, to witnesses each other’s lives? To be cheerleaders for one another.  

While we’re at it, why wait until the huge, most socially accepted milestones? Why not celebrate every little stone? I think we could all benefit from a little more celebrating.