In Memoriam

I’m pretty sure this is my last thing from the reunion, but it is meaningful for me.

The class of 1990 lost ten people along the way. I was close to some and barely knew others, but in each case it just doesn’t feel right that they’re gone. When I have lost people to old age, it is sad, but for people in my own age group it is a shock—that’s just not how it’s supposed to work.

I know many of my classmates were affected the same way, and that often the way it came out was a desire for more details. Having some details would just lead to a desire for more details: “I know it was cancer, but do you know what kind?”

I have observed this before, especially with suicide. There is such an element of shock there, along with guilt and every other negative emotion that goes into that mix, that I believe we hope the additional details will help things make sense. It doesn’t always work, but that desire is still there.

Also, I think to some extent there is a desire to hang on, and a feeling that more information will help. Since Josh died I have dreamt of him a few times, and the first time I remember asking him about this hat he used to wear. It was silly, and even in the dream I knew it was silly, but I understood that I was asking for something tangible to hang on to, and when I say it is silly, it’s because that even in the dream I kind of understood that it wouldn’t work. Whatever souvenirs you have, the person is still gone.

So, I understand that there’s a limit to how much getting more information can help. Not only did I suspect it, but I got a chance to test it out, because a week later I was meeting with some friends and I got more information about Adam and John, and David, and I gave information about Josh, and then the next night I got more information about Darin and Tricia. (I still have absolutely no idea what happened to Russ or James.)

On one level, it’s horrible, because I think as we add the details in the hopes of making sense, we also find ways where maybe it could have gone differently, and not happened, and there is a keen little pain there. It still seems to be part of the process, somehow, of arriving at acceptance. It took me years before David’s death seemed real—I kept half-thinking that someday someone was going to tell me, “Oh, that was a mix-up. He’s got a job over in North Carolina now.” That was partly because I heard one thing, that didn’t make any sense (it does make more sense now, incidentally), and I never saw an obituary or anything else, and it was certainly horrible if it was true, so somehow, it didn’t quite seem true.

There are other levels of comfort of course, and I will probably write about those some other time, but what I am getting at now is that I want real obituaries. In our reunion program we had their names and a poem, and it wasn’t even a good poem.

It’s not just their deaths. We also wanted to know more about their lives. All the living get a chance to submit short biographies (a chance which many squander, by the way), and maybe some of us don’t have anything new to report, but they did do things. Some had children, and marriages, and jobs and accomplishments. Okay, Paul did not have a chance to do anything after high school, and John and Adam barely did, but they still had hopes and dreams and things they would have done, and people who cared about them—there is something to say.

And yes, we do want to know about their deaths. The trend here, even in newspaper obituaries, seems to be for less and less detail, where it is very frequent for there to be no cause of death listed, so maybe it’s not a popular idea, and it could be morbid, and it totally might not help in the way that is hoped, but knowing all of that anyway, I still want to know. “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” And everyone with whom I have shared this sentiment agrees.

So, that’s what I want, and I know Classic Reunions will not take the responsibility, but it still seems desirable and possible. I would welcome feedback on this one. I kind of always do, but more than usual this time, I guess.

Otherwise, all I can do is express my fervent wish that the list doesn’t grow anymore for a while.


40 minutes walking outside
Rest
Romans 9 – 1st Corinthians 3