A lot of us experience it for the first time when we go back to grade school the year after graduating. In Eighth Grade, we were the focus---the result of several years of teachers’ attention---- we were at the top level of comfort: we knew where we were, and that somehow we belonged---even the wild ones were somehow at least tolerated. The teachers had a different kind of relationship with us than with the lower grades. They would actually talk to us, sometimes even taking us into their confidence.
But when we come back to visit just a few short months later, expecting that same feeling, there is a chilling realization that things have changed. Everyone is glad to see us, but they are occupied with other students, and we have this odd feeling we’ve been replaced; this is no longer where we belong.
We will experience this many times in life, of course. We will go back to visit high-school, college, the places where we had our first jobs, the friends we had when we were married to so-and-so. It goes on continuously in life: a chilling realization that what is past must always remain so. And sometimes we can feel it slipping away.
As I write this, my sisters and I are getting close to finalizing the sale of the house that we have called home for nearly fifty years. Dad died 40 years ago, mom just a few months ago. I still have the key Dad gave to me in 1960, saying “Don’t lose it.” It was the one promise to him I kept.
I’m quite melancholy, though I refuse to give in to nostalgia right now. Walking through the empty house, I feel that same chill of no longer being a part of this time and place. And it’s time to move on.
I wonder if that is how my mother and father feel, along with all the friends and relatives of the past. I’m sure they would love to come back, but it’s no longer where they belong. Their home is somewhere else.
TPM
January, 2009
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