Nothing is harder than losing a spouse you have spent a lifetime with, but a close second to that is losing a friend, whether you have known him all of your life or for just a short while. My life has been enriched by many friends, and I am thankful for each one of them.

The ones I went to school with are, of course, some of the closest ones, but many of the men and women Janie went to school with have become good friends also.

We have all heard the saying that new friends are silver and old friends are gold. I would say those words pretty well describe the importance of friends, and it’s surprising how quickly new friends can become golden. A man or a woman who has many good friends is a rich person. Money is good to have and it’s hard to get very far in this world without some of it, but I can remember what it was to be poor. To tell you the truth I was just as happy then and in some cases even happier than I am now. I can truthfully say friends are more important than money and anyone who argues that point is a fool who has missed the whole point of living.

People who are happily married are living in heaven here on earth. They can love their spouse and realize how good their marriage is, but they will not realize that it was heaven on earth until their spouse is gone. It’s not a shortcoming that we don’t realize this, it’s just that you can’t fully realize the value of true gold until it is taken from you, and then you will know it was heaven.

Since Janie is gone my life has changed. It’s not necessarily a change you want to make when you lose your spouse, but it is a change you must make so you can move on in your life, because the life you have remaining is still important in the eyes of God. To do something with it is to be obedient to Him. There will be days that are bleak and lonely but you mustn’t make those days the norm. That would be a shameful waste, so you must move your life forward although it’s not always an easy thing to do.

I have been fortunate to be invited into a new circle of friends. I referred to them as the Domino Gang. We don’t rob banks or hijack whiskey shipments; we just play dominoes and eat cake and ice cream together. That way we stay out of trouble. If you don’t belong to a gang like this I am sorry for you, because you can’t know how much fun it is. I’m not referring to Mexican train or chicken foot dominoes, because they are both frustrating and aggravating, I am referring to the comradeship and the laughter we share.

One of our members was Fred Moss, who recently passed away.

Fred was a real nice guy who took life as it came, enduring what was hard and enjoying what was good. Fred seemed to have the knack of playing the wrong domino often and then moaning about it.

When he got sick, those of us who lose most of the time told him he had to hurry and get well so we would have someone back in the game we could depend on to get beat worse than we did once in a while, but Fred didn’t make it back. We are all saddened and diminished by that.

Some of the gang had known Fred for a long time, while I had known him for only a short while, but we all feel this loss personally.

Perhaps it was because Fred had helped fill the hole that was left in all of our hearts when we lost our spouses. Perhaps it was because he made us laugh by bemoaning the fact he had played the wrong domino. I tend to think it is because friends become ever more important when you have lost the person you have loved all your life. The domino games will continue, and we will laugh and eat cake and ice cream together, but we will miss Fred and remember him.

That’s what friends are for, remembering, and Fred was certainly memorable.

As we all grow older, we will continue to make friends and we will continue to lose some of them. That’s what life is about more than anything else, and then someday our turn will come to leave and be remembered. Let each one of us hope we have lived our lives in such a manner that we will be remembered kindly with laughter as

Fred will be, and so leave this world just a little better for having been here.

• Joe Bowyer is a columnist for the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com.