Friday, January 11, 2008

Eric 2

I've already told you about my friend Eric. He is a terrific friend and a good man and I am proud to know him. His wife and daughter are waaaay too good for him though. I talked to Eric a couple days ago and he said that he and his family would like to meet with my family before Christmas. As he explained it, they had been working on a project for a couple of weeks and wanted to give it to us before Christmas. I figured that a chance to visit with a good friend would be a darn good Christmas present to all of us.

Today is the 23rd of December, two days before Christmas and it's a pretty solemn time around the Land household. We've been spending money at a pretty fantastic rate going to see Dr's and all of that good stuff that needs to be done in order to kill Bob and make cancer a thing of the past. It seems as though every time we drive past a Doctors office we drop a hundred dollar bill. I know it is the right thing to do, heck, it's the ONLY thing to do but it is still rather depressing. My work has been very slow lately and we have even had the building shut down early so the paychecks haven't been full for a while. Between taking extra days off to care for Leslie and having the job shut us down early I haven't seen a full paycheck since mid-October. The way I figure it, my paychecks have been about a wash with what we've been spending between Dr. visits and medicines lately. That has left us living on Leslie's paychecks so it's been rough but far from impossible. For Christmas presents this year Leslie and I took some names from the Salvation Army tree at work. I got to buy some gifts for a 5 year old boy and she got to buy gifts for a 7 year old girl. Merry Christmas! I have to tell you, it felt REALLY good to do that. We got some things for a certain 3 year old boy named Jared, of course, but we decided that we could forgo having presents for each other. We'd spend our money on Dr's and medicine and have a Merry Christmas for many years to come. Good deal to me!

We load up in the car and head down to Fort Collins to meet with Eric and his family. We're cruising down the road and finally wonder why we haven't heard from Eric yet. He left his house early and was already in Fort Collins about the time we crossed the Wyoming/Colorado border so he was going to find a good place to eat and call us to let us know where to go. As Leslie picked up the phone to call him it was buzzing and ringing. We laughed when we figured out that we couldn't hear the phone when it was in the little cell phone holder. Ooops. Eric had already passed us going northbound to our southbound and was in Wellington. He told us where to meet them so we flipped around and headed back towards across our tracks. We slide as we pull onto the ice sheet parking lot and slide over to the restaurant. Yeps, it's gonna be a white Christmas this year!

After exchanging hugs and hand shakes and "Oh My God, he/she has grown soooo much's" we sit down and order things up for lunch. It's always a pretty good time when we get together but it is particularly nice this time around. We've been needing to get out of the house and visit with friends and the Myrick's sounded like they needed it too.

We visit a while and pass the time as lunch waits to arrive. Eric leans over and hands me a Christmas card and, with that crooked grin of his, says that this is what he and Diane had been working on for a couple of weeks. He says that they wanted us to have this before Christmas. I've known Eric for a long time and he's never taken the time to sign his name to a Christmas card much less hand deliver one so I kinda wonder what's going on. As I'm opening the card Eric is telling me that he had spent a long time looking for this particular card and that he finally found it. You would have to know Eric to know how much it means for him to go card shopping. Believe me, it's a MAJOR event! Now it gets kind of mushy about now but I will warn you that it would have been a heckuva lot mushier if I'd had my glasses with me. As it is, I open the card and look at the very small type and then look at my very short arms and then look back at the very small type and realize that I'll be reading this card at another time. Dang glasses are never around when you need them. I open it up and see a wad of cash inside the card and I look over at Eric and tell them "I can't let you do this, man". I know that Eric and Diane just recently bought a house and that money has been pretty tight for them and I just can't accept cash from them as a present, no matter how good the intentions. Eric replies (and the mushy part begins...) "We didn't do it, a whole LOT of people did" I hand the card over to Leslie to let her have a look and perhaps read the dang thing for me and as I look back I see Diane just grinning from ear to ear and Eric is doing the same thing. As it turns out, Eric had mentioned that we had been having a tough time lately to a friend of his at work. This friend dishes up a couple of Denver Broncos tickets that Eric raffles off at work. Some folks didn't care to get in on the raffle and they just pitched in a few dollars here and there too. The dollar amount isn't important here but the fact that so many people cared enough to help us out is overwhelming. For the most part these are people that don't know us and will never meet us. They cared and they shared and they made us feel incredibly lucky to have what we have in this world.

To all of you that shared... THANK YOU! The Lord works in mysterious ways and he sure back doored us on that one. I've been whining and sniveling about how I was having trouble with my faith lately and then this came along and just whacked me right upside the head and back onto the path.

Eric, Diane, Memphis and critters... You made Christmas right. You did something for us that we can never say Thank You enough. I've said it before and I'll say it again, friends are the measure of wealth in this world. You don't need to have a lot, just one or two really good friends in this world will be all the riches you will ever need. Thank you for enriching our lives.
I don't remember much about the meal we had today but I do know that I enjoyed it with friends that are family and it was a wonderful time.

As we finished our meal and our time together we ended things as we began. Hugs, handshakes and all the standard fare. While we were driving back home Leslie read the card to me and I got pretty darn misty over the whole thing again. It's a good card, Bubba. Just right.

I'll be heading down to Denver to visit with them again in January and I'm pretty excited to see them all again.

You would think that this was about as good a day as anyone could have and you'd be right. The thing is, it's just getting started.

More to come...........

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mike Leslie and Jared.
Just wanted you to know how much we love you all. We wouldn't have done what we did if we didn't. Friends/Family are forever.