Two emails arrived this week that got me reflecting about life, family and friends.
The first one was an announcement that my last surviving cousin had died. He was the end of our generation in my home town of Ely, and, as my cousin, Lois, the writer of the email noted to my brother and me, "I think you two are the last left of that generation". Those were sobering words.
Later I received another email from Mary Jean, a school friend who lives in my home town. She wrote, "Where did life go when we weren't looking?" This friend has a way with words...to the point, and with a poetic quality.
Where did life go? It seems only yesterday that I was young and looking forward to a future, wondering what it would hold in store. I still feel much like that person I was growing up in the north woods, protected from much of the world, running through the woods, talking to strangers, exiting the house early in the day, to return in the evening after a day of adventures. Our parents didn't worry about us in those days, even though we were unconnected by cell phones. We actually communicated face-to-face, looking into each other's eyes, waiting for a response that included the non-verbal. We felt the world around us, smelled the scents of the forest, swam in the lakes (unsupervised), biked to the next adventure, dug in the earth, made sand castles, salted bloodsuckers, captured night crawlers for fishing, toads and frogs and chipmunks for short-term enclosure in cages, (thanks to the construction talent of my oldest brother), sprinted after the fireflies, picked wild berries, scraped our knees and played outside until well after dark.
During the inclement weather we played board games, listened to the radio shows and read, and read and read some more. We had our secret places such as forts in the woods and a crawl space on the top of the shed above the alley, where we hid from adult intrusion, and perused magazines and comics, wrote journals and secret codes. In the winter we sledded, made snow forts, sucked on icicles, threw snowballs and stayed outside until our woolen mittens and jackets became soggy with the wet snow. Shivering with cold, we reluctantly trudged into the house, suddenly welcomed by the aromas of homemade bread and cups of hot chocolate steaming on the kitchen table.
We had chores and homework, but we were sheltered from the outside world, except through the news reels at the movie theater and, when company came over, our ears plastered to the heat vent in the floor upstairs, listening to the adult conversations in the living room below. Drugs, crime, murder, wars, were only on a distant radar. We felt safe.
The teen years brought us closer to adult realities. There were the social studies classes, newspapers and greater awareness of our outside world. Still we were busy with teen-age stuff...dating, football games, gossip, malts at the downtown popular hang-out, proms, clothes and flitting contemplation of our future plans, often pushed under the covers with our busy-ness of growing up, or, perhaps, our fear of facing that great unknown...unprotected and no longer so safe.
Then we became adults with all the accompanying responsibilities. Over the years we were bombarded by the news of the entire world as our world became invaded by TV, computers, cell phones and we felt compelled to be aware, to vote, to take stands and to enter into life with all that we could offer to make that world a better place.
Where did life go? Am I really one of the last of my generation? I remember when my father moved in with us. He was almost 87 and he enriched our lives until his death at 92. I remember when he said that he did not want to die. There were so many things happening and he wanted to live to see what would happen next. He had always lived life with gusto. He supported a family in a job he detested, "underground, damp and sunless," he spent his free time in the woods he loved, and he read every newspaper and magazine within his reach, an influence on me I am sure. He gave to others, constantly helping out his neighbors, his community, his church. He led a full life, even during his last years when he moved in with us after my mother's and sister's deaths. He brought our neighborhood together, something that I had been too busy to do with work and all. He kept our fires burning during the winter, cutting the wood, piling it by the fireplace, and keeping a toasty fire 24 hours a day. After a few years he could only tend it during the day hours, and during his last year of life the wood lay uncut and the fire burned no more.
He lived life but at the end he, too, wondered, "Where did it go?" It passed too quickly and he was not ready to let it go.
He was a model and I hope to live life as he did...to the fullest and to the very end, and wonder, as does my school friend, "Where did it go?"
