Christmas cards

For Christmas, there are actually three potential topics. Two of them are good things, and one is sad, and it is probably the least Christmas-y of all three stories, so I guess it should go first.

It really goes back to the reunion, August 2010. As wonderful as it is to see everyone who is there, you always notice people who are not there. I ended up going through the booklet and circling the names of people whom I did not see at the reunion, and who were not on Facebook, and who did have addresses listed, and I was going to write to them and say "hello", and maybe encourage them to get on Facebook. The difficulty I ran into, and maybe it was silly to even worry about it, but I wanted to send cards, not just letters, and I could not find any that I really liked for what I was doing. I decided to do it at Christmas, and send Christmas cards.

For the most part, that went pretty well. I did not get any physical mail back, but two of the people I wrote to are on Facebook now, and one messaged me through there when he got on, and it's cool. So far that is not sad. The sad part is that before we got to Christmas I read that Gary Krumholz died.

I've written a few times about having your classmates die and how that feels. Well, it feels wrong, always, and there have been a few times where along with the sense of loss there has been some sense of guilt, wondering if I could have helped in some way. In this case, I had circled his name and address, and I was going to be writing out a card to him in a month, and I'd waited too long.

I made myself look. It was weird, but even though I knew that I would have and must have circled his name, and I had to look it up and see that mark, telling me that I was going to write to him, and now it was too late.

Most of the people were on the list were athletes on one of the teams I managed (Men's Basketball and Soccer, and Combined Track and Field). Gary was the one non-athlete. He was in band, actually, which was the one extra-curricular activity that I had the least to do with. We had gone to Five Oaks together though, and even though we did not hang out a lot of that, we had good talks when we did. He showed appreciation for me more openly than any other guy I can remember, which I am grateful for, though we were never an item. I would have liked to talk to him again.

I don't know that I could have. They found him in November, he was reported missing in October, but I don't know when he actually left. If you are an adult living alone, it can take a little longer to figure out when something has gone wrong.

And really, it was not a ridiculous amount of procrastination. The reunion was in August, I sent cards out in December, and it was a perfectly reasonable schedule. It just still wasn't soon enough, despite all that, and that one is going to sting for a while. What can you do?

I guess, as always, what we do is remember that life is unpredictable, and to appreciate people while you have them. It's not that I believe death ends everything--not even close--but this time here is important, and there are things that change when it runs out.

Gary, I'm sorry I missed you. I'm glad to have known you.

Alma 12-15
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