“Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.”
Oprah Winfrey

My husband started a small business nearly 22 years ago. Well, to be more accurate, he took over a business where he had been an employee. 13 years ago I went to work in the business with him. Fast forward to now, and times have changed, we reached a point where it was no longer economically feasible to operate the business, but that’s not what this post is about.

We decided that the least painful thing was to quickly shut down, and we did so. And now we are emptying out our last store (we had more than one). It was the original location, and it has the most stuff in it. Twenty-two years of accumulated stuff. Files, desks, chairs, tools, calculators and adding machines, computers, printers, outdated merchandise, repaired items never picked up by customers (what is UP with that?), cleaning supplies, retail supplies and fixtures, sign holders, phone system, network, servers, break room supplies, etc. Piles and mountains of stuff. The landlord gave us extra time to clear out this last location. But with only one employee remaining part time, and two other locations that had to be cleared out first it is a lot of work for the two of us.

So yesterday came. Sunday. The day of rest. And we need to be completely out by Wednesday, this week. And at 9:30 on Sunday morning, the cavalry arrived. Friends. My husband’s oldest friend, the eye doctor. His other friend, a small businessman himself, and his wife, a speech therapist. And the businessman brought his large pickup truck, and the trailer he uses to deliver the products he sells. And an entire truck and trailer were loaded with our office desks, and taken to our friend’s office, so he could for the first time ever, have desks that match in the office of his growing business. The speech therapist and I talked women talk while we sorted through, organized, boxed or threw away countless items: old phones, staplers, coffee mugs, retail hooks and hangers, file folders, paper clips, pencils, paper cutters, 3-hole punches, plastic file folder tabs, post-it notes, tablets, highlighters, cables, cables and more cables, and several hundred pens. The trailer soon returned, and the business owner, the eye doctor and my husband loaded it up again, with file cabinets they carried down the steps from the upstairs office, and the drawers upon drawers of heavy paper files that we are required to keep for at least seven years, along with other miscellaneous items like shelving units etc. to fill up the trailer and the pickup truck and take them to our home, and unload them into the garage.

Now the thing I want to mention is that all three men have celebrated their 60th birthdays in the last couple of months. And they worked as hard as guys half their age. On a Sunday morning. Even missing the first half of the football game. In fact, they volunteered, actually INSISTED on helping us out. Because they are our friends, and we needed help. And we would do it for them, in a minute, without thinking twice.

There is no bigger joy than that.