friends and time

Friends are not very permanent.

Not that they are flaky or bad friends, but a lot of things change over a lifetime. Friends move away, get sick, die. The message, as I see it is to cherish your friends.

I have known Lloyd as long as I can remember. When I was in junior high going to church I remember Lloyd and his little wife, they looked like they were just kids, and they had a baby! Actually Lloyd was 25 or 26 and his wife 21 or so.

It was many years before we went from acquaintance to friends. That is how life often is. I could talk about Lloyd a lot, but I want to just tell one or two things about him today, but be warned, I’ll be back on this subject. By the way, Lloyd reads this blog, so this is as much a tribute to friendship as a story about a friend.


Lloyd was a dairy farmer, back when a small dairy might have 20 or 30 milk cows. Now we have dairies around here that are 6000 and 10,000 cows. Lloyd raised a lot of the feed for his cows and ran the farm with the help of his 3 daughters, one son and his hard working little wife. The kids learned the joy of work at an early age.

About the time his kids were teens, the church asked him to be in charge of the youth ministry, a post he held for some time, and one I held some years later. Under Lloyd’s supervision the group had a very busy schedule of parties, feeds, camp trips -- lots of good times together.

With some frequency Lloyd would take the group camping. He would go with them, set up camp, then scurry home to milk the cows, stay overnight at home, milk the cows in the morning then high tail back up to the group. He would do this every day of the trip. The cows had to be milked.

That is called dedication to a job that needed to be done. Many of those young people still keep in tough with him. It was a very special time for all of them.

Now Lloyd was a pretty good farmer. Like all good farmers he would tell you that he did not do as well as he wished he could, but he still did the job well. But in his retirement, he has learned to be a pretty casual gardner. I’ll talk about his forest later.

He is not as casual as I am, mind you, but still pretty relaxed. It has been good for him. He is pushing up in that middle 80 territory now. He tells me he sometimes even feels old. Some things that he would like to do at his place, just don’t get done, he tells me.

Shucks, I am a bit younger than him, and there are a lot of things on my place that do not get done.

Right now I just want to honor a dear friend. I have been to funerals when he saint they talked about and the person I new did not seem to be the same. We forget to say good things to our friends when they can hear us.

There are no guarantees in this life. Friendships come and go, but at my age they tend to go mostly, but as long as I can I will cherish this friendship and hold it close to my heart.

Thanks for sticking around Lloyd.