The Shadows Call
 

I had posted this on a blog early in September, but I just don't have the energy to keep the blog alive. This was my first and favorite post.

The Shadows Call

It's hard to believe forty years have passed, though time has taken it's obvious toll. Funny, I wasn't even alive when they started showing up at the camp. The twilight of their years gone by and just living on borrowed time like so many others in their late 70's. Arthritis, heart disease, and a harder life than most of us will ever have to endure have done their work on these two.

As I sit on my deck watching them making their rounds to say their final goodbye's I feel an overwhelming saddening that these people are now out of my life. Though they don't have to be, everyone knows the drill, "Oh, we'll have to keep in touch", "Yes we will, here's my email, and phone number". You almost never follow through, not even with people that you really want to.

The old man does his best to hide his bloodshot and watering eyes. On the verge of tears with each handshake and hug, he hides behind the veil of his masculinity by blaming allergies but everyone seems to appropriately know the truth. His wife is not so ashamed of her feelings and tears stream down her face with each last hug, and each set of final words.

As I find my turn approaching for the "last goodbye" I curse the welling lump in my throat. I had no idea what these people really meant to me, until I realized that they represented a constant. They were just always "there". They were supposed to be there, and now that's gone. I guess part of it is realizing that I'm started to become that "old man" that will always be there. When he walked over to me and shook my hand and said so many kind words, I was frozen in the grip of the moment. It was as though a torch was passed, silently, and covertly through our handshake and the knowing look in his eyes that this was his last winter. I choked back my tears that wanted to spring from my eyes and returned many thanks for his help, the things I learned from him and realized in a way that I was saying goodbye to a man that I regarded as one does a revered grandfather.

A few hours later as we pulled out of the camp for the long drive home, I waved to the familiar site of the old man and his wife sitting on their deck as they always have, but this time they were simply waiting for everything to be over and to move into the shadows.

I can definitely appreciate your feelings of loss... most of us don't realise how much we rely on the constants in our life until they are gone. There is a sense of emptiness and disconnect as we contemplate our lives going forward without them. I felt it when my father died fairly young, but it wasn't until my grandmother died and I was left totally without parents/grandparents that I understood I was now without a connection to those earlier generations and history.

And when my children were born, I began to realise I was their constant. My house, just a house to me, was their home... something they would have more emotional attachment to than they would know until it was no longer there.

I hope that you do see your old friends again... but if you don't, they aren't gone, they just aren't there anymore. And there is a difference.

That's definitely true. Sadly, I don't believe I will see them again, but the memories I have of them will last forever.