PAST OPPORTUNITIES

As I hopefully plan for the 1964 Bellport High School Class Reunion, looking back on things, I wished it had worked out differently. I missed one of the past two class reunions, Sometimes opportunity knocks and we don’t answer the door, when we should have. But only in hindsight do we see that!

Watching TLW (The Little Woman) stand with her classmates at her class reunion, I suddenly realized, with all the laughing and smiling, the stories and catching up, that many of them would not see each other ever again! There seemed to be finality in that photo, a closing of another chapter in their lives, just as there will be one in my life.

When you are young, you build a storehouse of memories, that in your older age, you can take comfort in and recall only the good times. Sharing time and space with people is a wonderful thing. Once we lose that time and space, we can recall it with those people and be there once again. It’s when we lose those people that we lament the past.

I want to see as many of my old classmates as possible. I want to know that they are well, happy and alive. I want to share that happiness and all their tears, too. Why? Because they made me in part what and who I am. They were all decent people as kids, and seem even more so now. Oh, there may have been hurts flung by all of us at some point, that is the product of that age and time, just as now there is decent caring, a product of our age.

When I talk to them once again, after 45 years, I realize what I missed. How sad is that? I could have enjoyed their company, laughed with them and lent a shoulder when they cried. Maybe I can rekindle those friendships, and hope they forgive me for ever moving on without them.

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been."

Family and friends: two beautiful and sacred words.

Please remember my brother-in-law, John a guy who is always there when you need him, and all those that need our hopes and prayers.