Now for the first time in some years, a person from the past, who is still in the present but is in another place, distant, someone whose day-to-day life is no longer something in which I share, not even to the extent to which I shared in it before. Nor does this person share in mine.
I’m nearly 50. How many people who have come & gone in my life like that. Given the powers of technology — Internet, email, alumni associations, Facebook, Twitter, blogs — there are a lot of them from even distant times (relatively speaking) with whom contact has been restored. Or not.
My great-grandparents, my maternal grandmother’s parents, were separated for seven years, with no Internet or even telephones, & still kept love alive. I still love these my friends many of whom I’ve not seen in years. Some of them decades.
And then there are those who are separated by more, by death. My mother. Soon, my father. All their progenitors.
How does one then, restoring contact out of however much distance, however much time, truly know one’s friend again? I have no idea what he or she lives from day to day, nor does she or he know my life. What else is there? Yet we want to touch, some way. Why? How? But we do. If only to say, here’s what it’s like here since you left. Here’s what’s happened to me since we last saw each other. Here’s how my life has changed, or hasn’t. Here’s how I still love you.
I send this out to all my friends, all those whom I love. Whether you’ve read this or not. Whether we’ve restored contact or not.
