"Forever Friends"
By B. J. Schnabel

Have you ever dreamed of having your own ''Forever Friend?" Not just a great friend who you knew in your childhood years or perhaps a high school or college friend, but someone who would be with you in your heart forever?

We all grow up being given a chance in life, and that chance is to do the best we can; to be happy with ourselves. There has never been a person I know of, that has mastered doing everything perfectly, as we can only grow and become a ''Forever Friend'' through living. We must learn all that there is to know about ourselves through experience.

Experience often brings happy times, but it can also change all that is good and take us away from that road to happiness we are working to find. Experiences may be the foundation of our life, but they are not the end result. We alone control our own destiny.

Often we struggle for many years making what we feel are the right choices in our lives. We live through what later are remembered as old dreams, but not what we wanted for ourselves at all. What is important is that we recognize when we are wrong and try to begin again. Never losing hope for the happy ending we seek in life.

To say there is an easy recipe to have a Forever Friend? There is not. It takes a lifetime of sharing and not many people will take the time to ''feel'' that for another from the time they are young until they are old.

Forever Friends can be closer than a sister, a brother or any relative to you. They will love you unconditionally, though often they may disagree with your decisions and choices. They will cry when you do, they will laugh when you smile. They will love to hear everything you have to say, though often you are only making small talk and have nothing that significant to say at all. It is the being together, whether in person, on the telephone or over the computer that keeps you close in spirit.

Through the years we all change and though our young faces become mature, and they are lined with the expressions of laughter and sadness, it is those lines that tell a story about all of us. The lines by the eyes; are they from laughing or tears? The wrinkles that form on our faces; are they from age or are they also from the feelings we have experienced? To me, a face without lines, is a person without feelings. Like a beautiful painting; the face reflects our inner self.

Forever is a long time, but forever can be the joy one feels having loved someone for only a short time and then losing them. Forever Friends simply means; I will be there for you for as long as we live. Accept you for all that is good and bad and help you with your faults to encourage you to be all that you can be. It means that I will never leave you, and though I can not be with you, you are closest to me. You are my next breath, you are in my heart where you are protected and nurtured, appreciated and loved.

You have been my Forever Friend for most of my life and through those years we have shared the good and the bad. We have married others, divorced, remarried, but not to each other, had parents and loved ones die, had our children, grandchildren, pets, mutual friends. We have had dreams that materialized and some that just drifted through our minds; unfulfilled and leaving pieces of sadness in our hearts. What is important is we remained Forever Friends. We know that no matter what happens, as we grow older, we have our memories and nothing can erase that from our hearts!

There is no lesson to teach a child how to have this wonderful gift in their life, as it is one that will come to very few. If you are blessed with someone in your life that has been part of your life forever, tell them you love them, give them a hug, and never forget that you are "Forever Friends!"