Page 47 - SHS 50th Reunion

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Pam and Al circa 2013
Despite all the painful stuff I miss my high school years, and fondly remember many of my old classmates, some of whom I became friendly with during the earliest grades at Cottage Street School. And some of whom are no longer with us: Peter 5., Barry 5., Harry H., Jeff A., Dave B., Dave R., all good and close friends at various times. The death of someone we've known since youth is always shocking and hard to accept, likely because it reminds us in an especially direct way of our own mortality.
Like just about everyone else around our age, I wonder where all the time has gone. It can be overwhelming to try and get ahold of it all, all those years, all that experience. I can't possibly be 68 years old. Only other people get old. Only old people get old.
One of my favorite movie lines is from the Coen brother's remake of "True Grit:" It's the last line in the movie, delivered many years after Mattie's great adventure. The now aging, never married Mattie is looking back wistfully on the best time of her life, when she was just 14 years old.
She's tried and failed to locate her two much older allies and protectors from those days, to see and speak with them one more time before it's too late. She muses in voice-over, her tone resigned and sad and maybe even a little bewildered, "Time just gets away from us."
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