Has anybody else noticed that it has become harder to get a group of people in one place that does not involve an online meeting?
This year is my high school class reunion, and it seems as if every five years the number of people involved dwindles. It doesn’t appear to be due to folks passing on as much as it is because of the logistics of distance. Nobody stays in their hometown anymore. Gee, is there such a thing as a hometown for anybody?
It seems that everybody moves far away from where they went to school. A friend of mine has two children, both of whom moved across the country upon graduation (one half-way, the other to the opposite coast), and she sees them during the holidays when the families congregate in one place at least once a year. So it is with quite a few of the graduates, who in those days may have stayed put for five or ten years or so after picking up their diplomas, but then relocated elsewhere and lost touch. We still haven’t found a handful of people; it’s as if they moved to Mars or went into witness protection.
I don’t have a problem with them finding me, because I’ve lived in the same home all my life (and the high school is a few minutes’ walk from there), so I’m easy to locate. That explains why nobody contacts me. I’m like that famous place in your home state; since you know where it is, you figure it’s always going to be there, and you’ll get around to it when you’re ready. My contacts have been limited to social media group messages. As long as I get them, I guess they know I’m still living.
My hobbies over the years have also produced various circles of friends, and we also have trouble getting together. One of our groups had planned a big reunion which was interrupted by a certain worldwide problem. The last time we managed to do something as a group, we had a luncheon at Red Robin for five (out of a good thirty people). After so much time has passed, a few of us have mobility issues or can’t travel. I put the suggestion out there for a Zoom reunion. This would enable the movement challenged to be part of the action. We won’t have much longer to reconnect with some of us, which is depressing. The higher the numbers in your reunion, the lower the number of people you’ll actually get to see there.
My mother went to one class reunion–her fiftieth–and I drove her there. She remembered every face in the crowd as if no time had passed at all. I felt privileged to experience the happiness she felt when people were genuinely glad to see her. The invitation came by snail mail, so I suppose they figured out who had passed on by which envelopes were sent back by the post office.
Our world has become so out of touch that even reunions are suffering. It’s sad to think that the end of a long journey, such as twelve years of schooling, ends so abruptly that few care about the nostalgia of our lives while we shared them in those classrooms.
It’s not as if we live forever. The memories die with us.
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