She immediately knew that she didn’t want her poem to be about cancer.
She wanted it to be about friendship and asked if she could share a recent story.
"When I was a young child, my father had to file for bankruptcy. Just this morning, I found out that my best friend (of 50+ years) — her father — bought our house back then to save it… and I never knew this until today!”
“I called my best friend this morning to tell her about this, and to ask her to thank her father for me, who now has dementia. To my utter surprise, she shared that she had known about this all along (!), yet she never told me throughout all these years. Today I learned that true friends are taking care of you even when you don’t know that they are," she said.
Listener Poet Jenny Hegland
Georgetown University Medical Center
March 2020
True Friendship
True friendship is humble, like limestone—
ready for holding what needs to be held;
aware of its value without carving into form.
True friendship is solid, like tap root—
diving straight into earth through surface & stone;
holding steadfast as it settles among soil.
True friendship is pure, like the sun—
never needing the trees it touches
to turn toward the sky and worship.
