A man cried on the phone with me today. I called to give him a little good news, and he said he just couldn't care, because his child had cut off his contact with his grandchildren. He apologized for breaking down, but what else could he do? What worse thing can you do to anyone than to take away, by any means, all contact with someone they love? There isn't anything sadder.

A woman called me last month just to say she was stumped over what to do with her husband who is drinking himself into an early grave while her son is deployed in that other hemisphere. She had to know I wouldn't know what to do, but just wanted to tell me. Two of the three great loves of her life are in peril, and each far from her in one way or the other.

My brother-in-law's wife took their children to another country and has kept them there for 10 years. He's seen them twice in that time. He hasn't grown to love them less. He hasn't grown used to it. I don't know how he stands up under it. God has made him amazingly tough, but he's always in crisis.

Guess I think we should take every chance to love the ones we love, and be the best friends we can be to those bereft because of war, craziness, meanness, booze, or the plain old mortality that parts us all in time.