My child has reached a milestone today.
I do not refer to a graduation, marriage, divorce, or even child bearing.
I refer to the irreplaceable loss of that sense of the safety of immortality that only is allowed to those whose youth has not relinquished any of their peers to death.
Losing parents, grandparents, and teachers can be devastating to everyone, but it somehow doesn't change one's inner coil as much as does the loss of someone with whom you have gone to school .
The loss of someone who you have shared so many hours doing things for the first time at the same time creates a relationship that is neither sibling, cousin, or even best friend. It is simply the precious relationship one has with a classmate.
The common memories compounded over years of tests, teachers, projects, sicknesses, jokes, and playmates forms a unique bond that can never be duplicated or ever repeated. When this relationship is too soon ended due to sickness or accident I think it alters us at the most basic level.
We realize that death is not for the aged, the strangers, the others. We get an inkling that everything is not for ever and ever for everyone, and suspect not even for ourselves.
We come to know instinctively and perhaps even unwittingly that life is just a little bit more precious, fragile, and unpredictable than we had previously thought in that heretofore time of when it had not happened and we had not yet heard.
Most of us who are older can recall the moment when we learned about the loss of one of our dear childhood classmates...where we were, who told us, and who we in turn told. I bet most of us called another former classmate to inform and reflect on the loss.
I know I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news on the radio that two sisters of my age had died from my hometown in a tragic car accident.
Even now, forty years hence, whenever the victims' names are mentioned in the company of other classmates there is a subtle pause almost like a quick little hiccup in the conversation which allows a bit of memory to slip quietly by and the conversation returns to the present.
Other school friends of my children will pass, just as many of mine already have.
Each time it will be a shock accompanied by a unique sense of loss of that special relationship.
Each time the shared memories with other former classmates will serve to comfort and console in the way only classmates are able.
I do not refer to a graduation, marriage, divorce, or even child bearing.
I refer to the irreplaceable loss of that sense of the safety of immortality that only is allowed to those whose youth has not relinquished any of their peers to death.
Losing parents, grandparents, and teachers can be devastating to everyone, but it somehow doesn't change one's inner coil as much as does the loss of someone with whom you have gone to school .
The loss of someone who you have shared so many hours doing things for the first time at the same time creates a relationship that is neither sibling, cousin, or even best friend. It is simply the precious relationship one has with a classmate.
The common memories compounded over years of tests, teachers, projects, sicknesses, jokes, and playmates forms a unique bond that can never be duplicated or ever repeated. When this relationship is too soon ended due to sickness or accident I think it alters us at the most basic level.
We realize that death is not for the aged, the strangers, the others. We get an inkling that everything is not for ever and ever for everyone, and suspect not even for ourselves.
We come to know instinctively and perhaps even unwittingly that life is just a little bit more precious, fragile, and unpredictable than we had previously thought in that heretofore time of when it had not happened and we had not yet heard.
Most of us who are older can recall the moment when we learned about the loss of one of our dear childhood classmates...where we were, who told us, and who we in turn told. I bet most of us called another former classmate to inform and reflect on the loss.
I know I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news on the radio that two sisters of my age had died from my hometown in a tragic car accident.
Even now, forty years hence, whenever the victims' names are mentioned in the company of other classmates there is a subtle pause almost like a quick little hiccup in the conversation which allows a bit of memory to slip quietly by and the conversation returns to the present.
Other school friends of my children will pass, just as many of mine already have.
Each time it will be a shock accompanied by a unique sense of loss of that special relationship.
Each time the shared memories with other former classmates will serve to comfort and console in the way only classmates are able.
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