Posted 2/21/2015 6:05 AM (GMT 0)
Life s short, enjoy what is given you. I have to often remind myself of this.
I attended a 45th high school reunion a 5+ hour drive away over in north GA back in May 2012. This was a very small private school where I lived in dorms with guys who became like brothers for 4 years. Part of this school was a required work experience of a minimum 8 hours a week even for the rich kids, but those of us who had to work usually worked 16 hours a week to generate money for tuition/room/board, usually also staying there in the summer and holidays to work 40 hours a week. Anything from working in the dining hall to cleaning dorms or milking cows or slopping hogs, all labor was done by students supervised by adults. So in addition to school and sports we bonded through side by side labor some of us starting at age 13. So this may have generated stronger brotherly bonds and memories than the average HS. I THOUGHT I hated it at the time, despite the beauty of the campus and my good friends, my only brothers in my life. Thus my(our) favorite song to sing while swing blade-ing(SP?) grass or doing some other labor: The Animals "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" and "It's My Life and I'll Do What I Want", classic songs of rebellion for the teens of the 60s!
So any way there were maybe 12 or 14 of us at that reunion out of a class of about 40, average age ~ 63 . Several had already died. All appeared in good health at that reunion, but 3 of ~ 14 have died since 2012, just counting guys in my class. One of a stroke within a year, one from some sort of cancer a few months ago, one of our best basketball players just a couple of weeks ago from an unknown(to me) sickness. Two from the reunion- including me- have had RPs. And I just got word yesterday that a guy 2 or 3 years younger than me- the younger brother of one of my classmates from MD who was at the reunion- and whose young son was killed since that reunion in a car wreck- his younger brother, a real class clown, died. I did not even know he was sick. I read the obituary today: died of prostate cancer.
This is of course all to be expected as the years roll by. Still makes me sad every time it happens. Let us all appreciate fully our friends and loved ones while we still have them! As if you didn't already know that!
Bill in MS