Our Newest “Commencement”

For so many classmates who attended our reunion, the event was a beginning for us and even more so a celebration of that beginning.  We collectively kicked off a new phase for the Class, one where there are new friends, and we rekindled old relationships.  It was an opportunity to catch up with people we may have seen relatively recently, say, over the past 25 years.

These interchanges can be compared to blowing puffs of air on embers with the result that flames begin to grow bright.  And where there may not have been any relationship or no awareness of a common past, there were discoveries of the possibilities of friendships.  Imagine that, at 71, we can make new friends.

It was as if everyone was chanting in unison, “So we have all come to this place in our life. We all look like this.  We all see the inevitability ahead of us. We each will deal with this in our own way, but here is a chance to do it in the company of others with whom we share one part of our identities.”

Personally speaking, immediately after the service, when Michele and I walked out of the Memorial Service onto High Street, looking at the stone walls of my college, JE, the scene felt utterly new to me.  It was no longer only about my past or the collective past of the Class of 1969.  My mind no longer reverted to thinking about old events that happened on this sidewalk or this street at past points of time.  Somehow, memory and nostalgia had released me from their collective thrall.  I was fortified and clear-minded about the need to keep moving in the direction of the future.  I am curious about the road ahead and can’t wait to share the stories of that future road with my classmates.

At the same time, I was and remain ever so grateful to all the classmates who pitched in to make the Reunion the great event that it was.  We all supported each other during our common endeavor.  We all enabled each other to come to Yale on those days, May 30 through June 2.  What could be finer than that?