I’m going to cheat a little bit this week and use some comments I made two weeks ago at a joint reunion for the Oconto Falls High School classes of 1956 and 1957, my class.
So there we were at Romy’s Holiday Inn in Kelly Lake. It was like we were in a time warp, coming back for a reunion with friends from 58 or 59 years ago whom we seldom see otherwise. Words like “nostalgia” and “the good old days” don’t cut it. There’s something sort of spiritual about a high school reunion. It’s about life and death.
Yeah, that’s it. When you get to a reunion and start to relax and just talk to people, look into their eyes and hear the tangled and wondrous pieces of their lives unfold — and remember knowing them and being young — you can have a joyousness come over you that you don’t quite understand.
Perhaps what you realize is that aging isn’t simply a one-way process — that you aren’t simply surrounded by “used up old people,” the common stereotype of senior citizens. Instead, you’re confronted by people’s entire life spans.
Maybe you’ve heard of the poem called “The Dash” by Linda Ellis. Here are the first three stanzas and the last one:
I read of a man who stood to speak
at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on the tombstone
from the beginning … to the end.
He noted that first came the date of birth
and spoke the following date with tears,
but he said what mattered most of all
was the dash between those years.
For that dash represents all the time
that they spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved them
know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own,
the cars … the house … the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
and how we spend our dash.
Well, the folks at our reunion are still all in our “Dash.” Our youth and raw potential didn’t disappear; they remain forever part of who we are, even though they may be hidden behind an exterior of grey hair, wrinkles, aches and fading physical vigor. Because we all knew each other way back when, we see the distant teenage past in their eyes and in their words, as well as the surface of the present moment so evident in their faces, in their hands. We see lives lived. We see entire lives lived.
There’s a Danish artist named Per Kirkeby who talks about the layers in his paintings. “When you look at a painting, what you see is the final layer of the painting, but all the layers are still present,” he said.
That’s how it is at a reunion. What we see outwardly is the final layer, but all the layers are still present. We are not entirely the “same” people who walked out of OFHS so many years ago. Back then we were all fresh faces, some with dreams in hand and spirit, eager to make our marks on the world.
Our Class of ‘57 motto was “Our future is not a dream but a reality.” For some of us, our dreams came to fruition. For others, dreams changed and evolved into a different and marvelous reality which we couldn’t have imagined as kids.
Whatever we have become, for the most part we are far better people than when we left the launching pad back in ’56 and ’57. We are more articulate, more expressive and more self-assured now than we were then. We have the ability to fight through the insecurities of our youth and the peer pressure that limited the full potential that resided within us. We are more complete people. We have held jobs and raised families.
So, OK, why is our affection for all these people so extravagant? What are some of the reasons nobody forgets their high school years? Well, this was the place where we grew up. This is our spiritual home. This was the place where we were safe. This was the ground where the seeds of later life got sowed. These were the people who were the anvils upon which we forged who we were and what we would become. These people were the loving teachers of all the really important lessons of living and of life.
That’s what reunions are all about, isn’t it? To forget our high school years would be to amputate a major part of us.
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