Friends can't be bought, bartered or traded for

Significant, life-changing events happen in all of our lives, regardless of status, wealth, skin color, heritage, ethnicity, religion, or anything else that tends to separate us rather than bring us together. No one completely escapes the slings and arrows that life throws at us because life is not always neat, orderly and predictable. In fact, as often as not, life is messy, unruly, confusing, frustrating and unpredictable. We all have dates we celebrate and dates we mourn and, unfortunately, some of our mournful dates fall on days where most everyone else is celebrating.

That's the way Thanksgiving is for the Hendricks clan every year. My and Linda's oldest son and Michael and Will's brother, Brandon, died seven years ago today, two days after Thanksgiving but we weren't notified until Monday morning at 6 a.m. when the Marines knocked on our doors to give us the tragic news.

That ruined Thanksgiving for us forever because it's impossible to separate the holiday from the tragedy. We all try of course. I'm not able to make the twenty-two hour round trip drive to Arkansas for Thanksgiving because of the short break we have at the college but we call each other and Michael and Will and their girlfriends go over to their mom's house for turkey dinner just like most other families do, except while they're eating and talking and laughing, their outward behavior belies the immense pain and loss they feel in their hearts and their souls.

People are so good in this area about taking care of those who are facing a holiday alone and they've always been good to me. I was asked by Jim Garretson, a fellow teacher at the college, to come and join his family for Thanksgiving dinner and I was happy to accept. I didn't count but I believe there were eighteen or so of us sitting at a long table in Jim and Donna's dining room and the experience transported me back to the days of my youth.

I grew up in an extended family in Arkansas, living the first 17 years of my life with my mom, dad, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt and uncle and our Thanksgivings were exactly like the one I experienced with the Garretson's this Thanksgiving. We had other relatives come in as well and there were two large tables set up; one in the dining room for the adults and another in the kitchen for the kids. I remember what a big deal it seemed to be when the kids got old enough to graduate from the kids table to the adult table because we would sit there for hours after finishing our meal, talking about our lives and our accomplishments and disappointments and I never got tired of doing that. I miss that a lot.

After Linda and I were married, we had the same kind of celebration at her relatives' house. Almost her whole family clan lived in Pryor, Okla., and we would alternate between houses every Thanksgiving and it was a very similar experience to the one I had growing up.

But now, because of mistakes and misjudgments I've made, I find myself alone in a town I didn't grow up in and in a place where I'm related to no one so it's extremely heart-warming to be asked to join a family, if only for a couple of hours, because Thanksgiving, more than any other holiday, is truly a family affair. After I left Jim and Donna's house, I came home to my empty apartment. I sat down on my couch, shed a few tears, sent Jim an e-mail thanking him for his kindness and his hospitality and then wrote this column.

So to Jim and Donna, Stan and Ellen, Jim's mom and dad, his two sisters and their husbands and everyone's kids who were there, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking me in and making me feel wanted and at least, for a little while, a part of YOUR family.

And then, around 5 p.m., I got a call from another friend of mine who has moved here from California. He told me they had a Thanksgiving plate of food fixed for me and all I had to do was come and pick it up. So thanks to Jim Harris and his wife Linda for thinking of me and providing me with supper and Ann, Danielle, and Brooke Cappel for asking me to be a part of their family on Thanksgiving too.

Friends can't be bought, bartered for or traded for. We can't make people like us or love us. That's a free gift only they can give and I'm eternally grateful for the friends I have that put my needs ahead of theirs on this Thanksgiving Day.