Thirty-five years is a long time. It is a lot of water under the bridge of life. Such is life when friends say good bye and new chapters open. High school graduations are a major event before the scattering starts. Those who spent almost every day together then are pursuing much different paths. I left high school to attend college. I had other friends who went directly to work and others got married. Whatever the reason, we all scattered and hardly looked back. We had lives to live and goals to achieve. The seasons of responsibility came, and we all raised families and/or immersed ourselves in our work. There are a lot of reasons that distance became the key word in old friendships. Literal distance was what separated me from old friends—I moved to Alaska. The reasons are many for why we all have 40 years of distance and occasional thoughts of: "I wonder where so-and-so is right now."
I got the chance to sit down with five of my long lost friends this last week. I was in Seattle for meetings and was invited by one of my high school friends to come by and meet her husband and get caught up on the gap of 35 years. It was a wonderful time of catching up. There was not enough time to talk about the last 35 years since I had seen them. We could only show photos of our children, and there were plenty of grandchildren to brag about. We were all in pretty good shape—gray hair and less hair (actually none for me) were the signs we were not wide-eyed teens anymore. We get our exercise chasing grandkids and attending fitness aerobic classes.
If you can come to this season of life and look back with a smile and give thanks to the Almighty, then it has been a blessed life. I am looking forward to the next chapter. I do not plan to slow down or give up. Life has been good, and now I have a few more friends in the boat with me.
