By Bonnie Lee Strunk

Special to The Press

My sister-in-law’s question at my husband’s funeral made me chuckle. While meeting some of my friends before the service, she asked one of them whether he and I had been friends for 40 or 50 years, like several of the others she had just met.

She seemed fascinated by the concept of maintaining close friendships for many decades. Apparently many people don’t.

Thinking about her comment recently, as a friend of more than 60 years prepares to move out of state, I realized the vast majority of my close friends, both male and female, have been part of my life for at least 30, 40 or 50-plus years.

Some were fellow students in high school or college. Others were co-workers at various businesses. Several were befriended at the Jersey shore in the late 1960s when we all stayed in the same rooming house.

I’ve been blessed to have relationships with longevity. Of course, I relish making new friends, too, and recently have been enjoying the company of a friend I met almost a year ago.

I also met a woman a few months ago who told me she really doesn’t have friends. That’s hard for me to imagine, since I am a people person, but she seems content with her status.

My closest friend, Margaret, who died unexpectedly four weeks after my husband passed away in 2020, worked with me when I was about 19.

I can’t say it was friendship at first sight. She thought I was too wild and crazy, and I thought she was boring. Nevertheless, we liked each other and our personalities met somewhere in the middle.

Our friendship deepened and lasted more than 50 years, until her final breath. Rare was the day we did not chat on the phone, including just hours before she died, and I still miss those calls.

Contemplating our relationship and its rocky beginning, I realize friendship, like all good partnerships, needs to include a hefty dose of compromise.

Other qualities I value in my friendships are the way we help each other cope in difficult times, the suggestions we make which provide another point of view, the encouragement and support we offer, and the unconditional love and acceptance we can rely on, no matter what.

I learn a lot from my friends, and I hope they also learn something from me.

Having a connection with friends, according to researchers who study older people, can help us live longer. Good friends fill an important need in our lives. They can be more objective than our families. Friends enhance our mental health and our quality of life.

For me, the traits I most desire in a friend are empathy, honesty, trustworthiness and dependability. I, in turn, try to make sure, by my actions, that friends know they can trust and depend on me.

I have been told by friends that I am understanding and a very good listener, traits important in successful friendships.

Having friends who accept us and care about us is a formula for happiness. That works two ways, of course. Being able to make others, including our friends, happy is one way to make ourselves happy, as well. For many folks, great satisfaction comes from helping others.

In our role as friend, we are the supporting cast in one another’s ongoing, ever-changing life story. By being a true friend, we can help give that story a happy ending.