Notes

I used to send about 60 Christmas cards every year, and each one held some kind of a note.  Sometimes the note could be quite lengthy, sometimes three or four lines, but each note was personal, meant for just that particular person or family.  I don't send cards anymore, it got too expensive, it was hard letting go of that tradition.

Since I don't send Christmas cards anymore, I don't get many either.  But, when I do get one I'm delighted, even more so when the sender has included a note.  I love the notes, I don't care if they are only a few lines long, it is nice to know that at that particular moment in that person's life they were thinking of me, and that dear friends and family overjoys me.

This year I got a note from a classmate, in it she told me another of our classmates had passed away this year.  Sadly, I did not recognize the name..."I don't know this person." I thought.  Who the heck is she talking about?  For a while I let this information slosh around in my brain, hoping I would eventually have recall.  Hours went by... I was still asking myself, who the heck is she talking about?

Finally, I could not stand the mystery any longer.  I head for my Yearbook, The Portal.  I was sure this person would not be part of our class, there were only 80 of us to graduate, how could I possibly forget one of us.  I start leafing through the pages.  Sure enough, there he was tucked in between the H's, on page 32.

You have no idea how disgusted I was with myself...not just because I didn't recognize the name much less come up with a face, but because I had reach an age, when an entire part of my life was becoming a blur.  A lot of my graduating class, were 'mates' I had from First through Twelfth grades.  How is there even an inkling I would forget people who had occupied such a large part of my youth?  I want to slap myself silly.

I then had to ask myself a serious question.  "How many class mates do not remember me?"  Scary thought, that.  The only reunion I ever went to was in 1960, and if it were not for the two or three girlfriends from my class who have written notes to me all these years and who attended the reunions, I would never have known what was going on in the lives of my class mates.  At each reunion a picture was taken, each reunion I recognized fewer and fewer faces.   A little newspaper (The school's "ECHO") would be published updating who is living where, how many kids, grand-kids and now great-grand-kids we have...it was kind of like getting a whole bunch of Christmas notes.

The last reunion, there was not picture, there was no newspaper, fewer people attended.  Oh, I got a note from one of my class mates that attended and she told me who was there, and I was grateful, but it was also kind of sad...sad...the end of an era; were we getting too old to care.

I guess this blog could also qualify under "Things They Never Tell You".  We graduated in 1955, (yes, I am that old) and nobody ever told me the time would come when that year would seem so far away, that memories would fade, faces would blur, and names would completely vanish from my vocabulary.  So I thank goodness for friends who still write notes, that draw me back to lovely memories, smiling faces, and names from times long ago.