I recently became reacquainted with my two best friends from college after more than 25 years of total silence between us. I was scrolling through my email, and a friend request dropped into my inbox, pretty as you please, and I knew immediately who it was. The recognition of the name was instantaneous, probably because it was her first and maiden names, followed by her married name – same as her college boyfriend we all knew back then, and the same as the man she married shortly after graduation in a wedding ceremony where we were all attendants.
This was not my first blast from the past that had proffered a friend request, and my first thought was, “How in the world did she find me?”
First and foremost, unlike most women I know who use their first, maiden, and married names (a brief aside, ladies, when there are more than two married names, it’s time to call it a day on the comprehensive FB names…just sayin’), I use my first, middle, and married name not only as my FB name, but my legal name, as well. My maiden name was given to me by a father with whom I had minimal (and not always the best) relationship, and he – being the last of his line – is gone now, so I didn’t see the need to hang on to something for the rest of my life that had very little meaning to me personally. Besides, I have a kickass middle name, and I saw no reason why it should shrivel away into oblivion, just because I got married. But, I digress… This somewhat unconventional name arrangement on my part, coupled with the fact that I live on the other side of the country from where I grew up and went to college, makes it more difficult for me to be found by any casual search. Apparently, the friend was fairly persistent in her search, and thanks to one of those privacy-invading websites that collect all your personal information from every online encounter you have ever had over the past 20+ years, my disguise was unveiled.
Such ancient history contacts always give me major pause, and I have ignored as many such friend requests over the years as I have accepted, if not more. I mean, what do we really have to discuss after such a long silence? Given that we were 20-somethings then and 50-somethings now, it stands to reason that we are nothing like the people we were then, and though we shared a few years doing life together in fairly close proximity – both physically and experientially – in the grand scheme of life, it was but a drop in the bucket of what had come before to some degree and what has come after in a huge degree. As I jokingly (sort of) commented to both of them, it’s a little bit awkward to kick off with, “So, how have you been for the past 25 years?”
We were all pretty close back then, though I couldn’t tell you much about our individual personal and deeply held beliefs beyond those that directly impacted college and that for which we were all (supposedly?) there – a degree. While one would like to think that – under any other circumstances – we’d have chosen one another as friends for the things we shared, the things we had in common, or – I don’t know – because we liked one another and enjoyed one another’s company, I guess we’ll never truly know for sure. Perhaps this second chance at friendship would answer that question for the “here and now,” but I suppose the past – on that front, at any rate – will remain forever silent. We were all thrown together in a co-ed dorm for transfer students, and through one means or another, we gravitated toward one another as friends that led us to joint life experiences outside of the dorm and the university we all attended. As I’ve already indicated, we were all in one friend’s wedding, and I became apartment-mates outside of the dorm with the other friend and spent most of my senior year in a relationship with her older brother – forever frozen in my memories as a kind-hearted young man in his late 20s who in reality was killed in an auto accident some 6 years ago at age 51.
There’s been a lot of life run under the proverbial bridge since 1985 – the year we graduated – and when I think about reconnecting after so long, it raises my heart rate just a bit. I mean, what if we go to all the effort to reconnect in more depth than a few FB private messages, only to discover we have absolutely zero in common. I mean, what if they are vegans? Green Peace supporters? Or, dare I say it, liberal Democrats? I’d be crushed! LOL Okay, okay, I’m kidding (mostly), but I think you get my point. Would the inability to meaningfully reconnect now somehow overshadow all the fond memories of yesteryear?
Then, there is a certain sense that revisiting that part of my life might be…well…disruptive to where I am today. I have generally fond recollections of that time, though I’d be lying if I told you that reconnecting with friends from so long ago doesn’t stir up memories…actions…relationships…life choices…and, yes, regrets that have long been dealt with and locked away in that file cabinet in my head marked “p” for “past” in the file marked “best forgotten.”
Secondly, however, the “How did she find me?” quickly morphs into “Why was she looking for me?” followed closely by “Why now?” This begins to take me down more uncertain pathways of human relationships and what constitutes a good one, and what really defines a friendship anyway? The journey for me personally eventually, inevitably, finds me standing outside the gate of, “If the relationship were that great to begin with, we would have never lost touch in the first place.” This takes me far beyond long lost college friends and drops me squarely into the abyss of my adult siblings with whom I presently have exactly zero relationship.
A few months ago I found myself in the middle of a knock-down drag-out argument with someone very close to me, and in a fit of unfiltered anger I sniped, “Oh, now you sound like…” and I named one of my siblings to which the other person jabbed back, “Yeah, well, who is the common denominator in both situations?” Yes, you guessed it…that would be me. Maybe it is as simple as that…all roads lead to me…the buck stops with me…the breakdown of the relationship with my siblings is all my fault, but I don’t believe that anything in life is that easy, particularly when it comes to family.
There was a time in my life when I’d have described our family as close. We had our issues as most families do, and our issues were complicated by the realities around the fact that we were all steps and halves of one sort or another. Nevertheless, through various circumstances, we all eventually ended up growing up in the same house together as siblings for at least some or all of our childhoods, and when we all lived in geographic proximity to one another and my mother was still alive, I’d have told you the nuclear bond that defined “family” for me was there.
The year before my mother passed away, I moved cross-country to the west coast, and the year after her passing, I got married. For the first 5 years of our marriage, we traveled back east on numerous occasions for family gatherings, including holidays, weddings, and family reunions. The last such visit was about 10 years ago, when we all gathered for a nephew’s wedding then spent time together at a family lake house.
Sometime after that, I enthusiastically suggested that – since we had come east some 5 or 6 times now, perhaps they would be willing to come west one time…perhaps even meet us half way for a family gathering. One by one, they all declined the suggestion. In hindsight, I think this was the point at which I quit trying. I don’t think it was a conscious decision to cut them off, but I do remember being stunned that all of them declined, and there was no “maybe next year” or “let’s talk again after…” or the like. It was just, “No.” It began to occur to me that perhaps the nuclear family in all its glorious imperfections which I once held so dear might just have been a figment of my own imagination. I went through a period of mourning then, because it finally occurred to me that when I lost my mother, I had essentially lost my entire family.
Though I have lived on the west coast for 16 years now, none of my siblings have ever visited me here. Meanwhile, Facebook has revealed trips out this way some have taken to visit friends or to take a family vacation, but no contact was ever made or suggestion of a visit was raised. Likewise, FB has revealed numerous family gatherings amongst all of them for holidays and family getaways over the years, but invitations for my family and me to join them have never been issued. To borrow a phrase from Star Trek of old – a phrase that was often offered to Captain Kirk by Dr. McCoy and which is commonly uttered in our home when one reaches the end of a bottle of ketchup or salad dressing, “It’s dead, Jim” – the “it” in this case being my relationship with my siblings.
“What does all of this have to do with reconnecting with old college friends?” you might ask. Good question.
When I realized that my ties to extended family – whether real or imaginary – had been severed, I poured my whole heart into building a life for myself in the “here and now”…into the people and relationships with which I had been blessed. I made the conscious decision to close the door on the past and invest all of my time, talent, and treasure – physical, spiritual, and emotional – into today and all that entails.
While the reconnection with old college friends is – in and of itself – not that earth-shattering in the grand scheme of things, it opens a door in my life I thought was long closed.
If I can go back and reconnect with old college friends, should I attempt to reconnect with my siblings? While the foremost simply means opening the door, the latter requires a decision of how far into the room I should/will go. It is a question for which I have no answer today and probably won’t have for tomorrow or the next, either.
In the meantime, having accepted FB friend requests from both college friends, I will focus on working up the courage for a phone call. Baby steps…always a good idea when contemplating the past. I’ll keep you posted.