60th High School Reunion: No More Resumes

I attended a small high school – about 90 in our graduating class – in Swarthmore, PA, a small town tucked into the State’s southeastern corner, almost in Delaware.

We held back for so many years, timidly probing in our teens, then at our next several class reunions, a great deal of “resume” speak, understandably so as we began our livelihoods, started our families, telling folks what we did, what we accomplished.  But now, 60 years after graduation from high school, there was almost the complete absence about what we did. Nobody had to prove anything. We shared openly about what’s keeping us on our feet, what we’re affirming, what sparks our day.

Throughout I felt compassion, also acceptance and joy.  And gratitude.  For every day, gratitude. Everyone in the room had experienced pain and loss in some form – loss of spouse, even a child, job, disappointment, hurt – totally inevitable at our “tender” ages. Accepting this vulnerability as a given, almost everyone  it seemed to me, talked about what was sustaining them now: grandkids, church work, writing, travel, gardening, or involvement in politics –  preserving the environment, gun control, supporting candidates for office, and more. 

Our 60^th high school reunion was brilliantly and sensitively organized:  Above all, there was time, (the most precious gift at our age) to see, interact, wine and dine, and to be with, listen to each other.

No one mourned their lots or losses in life, but all, on some level or another, affirmed life.  Humor abounded.

Of this we gave not resumes, but ourselves, risking embrace.

Following the reunion I was inspired to send my classmates the concluding poem, “Imago Dei,” in my book “Through the Hourglass.”

She told me that she

Fought through her fears

To go to the bedside of her estranged,

Dying father.

“I cannot tell you how glad I was

To get to say ‘goodbye.’”

 

She has it wrong, I thought:

Not “goodbye,”

But perhaps for the first time, “hello.”

 

A friend who doctors prisoners

Released to die of AIDS said,

“It’s amazing.  They change.

Their defenses drop.

Their personalities emerge like butterflies.”

 

Should it really be easier to risk hello, risk our true selves,

When we know there’s a quick exit,

The sure knowledge of death,

The ultimate hedge against rejection?

How odd that we feel protected by death, not life.

 

The armor of imminent death should not be needed;

Rather we need the certain truth that we,

Like the Velveteen Rabbit, should wind up

A bit battered,

Wondrously worn,

Sure in the knowledge that we’re free to love,

Because,

Very simply, we have been loved.

The reunion was suffused w/fun, substance, compassion, and yes, love. It really was a “re-union,” or perhaps more accurately for the first time, a “union.”