Visiting the Past

Last night I drove 2 miles to a restaraunt in my town and walked up a set of stairs and straight into the past. Old friends, childhood companians, stood in front of me with legal glasses of wine in their hands and a few wrinkles on their faces (mine too). As I made my way around the room at this memorial dinner for Ranjan Sinha, a high school classmate who recently passed away, what I noticed most is that noone's eyes have changed.
styles, yes
body types, yes
 hair color, yes
 eyes, no.
 I saw my old friend Tracey...one of my BFFs from childhood. It was one of those homecomings...one of those "where have you been for 25 years and how have we not spoken? What is your husband's name? Are you happy? do you work? Do you love what you do? Can you sit for a hundred years and catch me up? When did you meet him? What flowers did you have at your wedding? Do you drink diet Coke, I do, and I wish I could stop, what are your friends like? Do you remember this, that and the other thing??? I love you even though we haven't spoken in spoken in forever"

Our friend Patty wasn't there from Florida and we missed her...My old friend Sandy wasn't there either but we spoke about both and several others that couldn't make the trip. We ate dinner, caught up and watched a slide show of Ranjan running around different tracks all over the East Coast. The sighs were loud and authentic when candid pictures appeared of coaches Mark Wetmore and Ed Mather sitting at the Penn Relays or on the track at Bernards High School. Most of these shots caught them in the middle of a lecture, and I knew that even the photographer was changed by what was being said as he or she was taking the picture.
Stories were shared about my father...how he helped people through hard times, how he would sit at "the wall " at the high school and say "What you are experiencing you here, today, will affect you for the rest of your life and you will always remember it." And I witnessed over and over again how right he was. I pictured him there in the room with us, in a tie and jacket, with a glass of water in his hand looking around, smiling and nodding his head so thrilled to see the runners gathered there. How proud he would have been of everyone...not because of any business titles or so called successes....but because we showed up 25 years later and cried and hugged each other and were present with the glories and regrets of the past.

When I saw the lack of ego in this group, the lack of needing to show off or be something other than we are...I thought of so many people that I have met  in my adult life that are so imprisoned by their image and what they want others to think of them, that it is difficult  to get to know who they actually are. It felt to me, that last night, we all showed up as we are...fit, not-that fit anymore, married, divorced, single, "successful", struggling, happy, depressed, satisfied, craving more, better off, less off than we were in the last time we saw each other in the mid eighties. And I know that the truth is that all of us are a little bit of all of these things. I went the whole night pretty much not knowing what anyone does for a living. I did not talk to one person about the car they drive or where they vacation, what school their children go to or what their job title is. This is rare for a cocktail party in my town and I had a quiet smile on my face even through the sad parts of the evening. Because every person there was so beautiful in my eyes. I held hands longer than I would normally do, hugged tighter and sat closer to those around me. It was a night of authentic (there's that word again) relationships, even with the people I never hung out with much in high school. I don't know if this was about Ranjan's death or something else. Death, illness and struggle, as resistant to these things as we are, seem to be what allows human beings to show up "uncovered" in a way that nothing else does. I can not help but think that this is part of the plan. That it is the struggles, the losses that brings us to crave a connection to God and other people in a way the easy phases of life don't enable us to do.

We met this morning at "the wall" at BHS and we had bagels and some of us went for a run...the rest of us took pictures of those who ran :). It is safe to say, because I live around the corner in the house I grew up in, that I drive past the high school every day. And every day I think about that wall and the ghosts that gathered there all those years ago to stretch and talk and run. Not only run from the wall, but perhaps from all the things that were happening in our young lives that we probably didn't know how to talk about. But last night, as teammates remembered Ranjan, they spoke about their the isolation they felt during those years, how they felt like an outsider and Ranjan made things easier for them during high school. I know he was brillant, I know he was fast, I know he was a hottie...but at the end of my life, I don't know if there would be a better compliment, a better expression I would want to represent my life, than I was the type of person who made someone's life easier while they were in high school. This was a theme in remembering Ranjan Sinha.
When I drive by the high school tomorrow morning on the way to the grocery store, the ghosts will be a little more alive for me, maybe a little slower than they used to be..but perfect all the same. Thanks for a great weekend.