This past week I spent several days in Homer, the little N. Louisiana town where I grew up.  I went there to attend my 50th high school reunion, and once I got used to the idea that I actually graduated that long ago, I began looking forward to the event.

Almost as soon as I arrived at the afternoon gathering which opened the festivities, I learned that 11 of my 48 classmates were dead, 2 from suicide.  Then I talked with another classmate to whom I was particularly close, and I asked about his older brother.  He spoke in hushed tones: “Oh, he’s been dead for 30 years.  He killed himself.”  Welcome to Reality Reunion.  I wondered if this percentage of losses was normal, or if we were particularly prone to death–at least the men in our class, for 10 of the deceased were men.

My classmates were grown-ups.  They were (mostly) not playing games or being shy or competing.  They were just who they are, and glad to be there with one another.  The beauty queens were still pretty, if a bit thicker at the waist.  Some of us nerds had blossomed into more attractive adults.  People mainly had stayed married, many to hometown friends.  One woman I knew well had had a stroke and needed to remain seated.  Another who had been my college roommate had had a double mastectomy and had almost died a couple of years ago from a blood clot racing to her heart.  The top student in our class looked great–he had become a doctor, board certified in two specialties.  But his wife barely made it to the reunion.  She was suffering from a neurological disease which almost killed her last year, he said.  She looked pale and drawn.  He reminded me that in high school he and I “had been competitive.”

Maybe we had.  I didn’t remember it that way.  And now, what did it matter?  My classmates and I laughed and talked, lost in memories,  There was nostalgia and real joy, and yet all the talk seemed somehow laced with a nervous hum.  We were all standing on the edge of time, and we knew it.

The slights were recalled: the time I was left out of the pallet party, the way I always sat on the end when our group went to the movie, the fact that I never, never had a date, not even to the prom.  It didn’t matter.  Many dreams had been dashed, mine and theirs, sooner or later.  We had all suffered, and we would all suffer still more.  And each of us would die.  We had each had our little triumphs, our moments of joy.  Each had taken a.different path, some more exalted than others, and yet each had in common, this keen sense of mortality. We came together for this brief time, we touched, and all was forgiven. 

So you can’t go home again.  There’s no margin in doing so, for that home is frozen in time, is merely memory, and no longer exists, as soon as you step out of that page of your life.  You bring this new self, your changed self, back into that remembered time, and you smile.  You wish you had known then what you know now: we’re all afraid that we’re not enough.  In those trying high school years, each of us needed a little bit of kindness, some affirmation.  We still do.  It’s never too late.