Seems this was the year and summer of reunions. After being penned in the Covid coop where we all for various reasons and fears isolated ourselves from the rest of the world we hungered for something new. New experiences! New faces! Old faces! Different Faces! Anything… except politics and bitching about the economy.
Rainy River had the solution!
“Let’s have a 120 Year Anniversary Celebration of the founding of Rainy River!” someone suggested. Historically on the fur trading route it was known as Beaver Mills prior to 1904.
Great idea! Committees were formed! Contacts with former residents were dug out! Ambitious plans were announced and it was a go, coordinated with our annual RailRoad Daze Summer Festival.
It was a doozy of a party!
Friends and relatives we had not seen in decades swarmed the community. The conversations had a lot of similar threads like:
“My your looking great…. Dear or Buddy, or Sport or some other generic moniker because you cannot for the life of you figure out who you are talking to. After a 10 minute reminisce you do figure out who it is and think to yourself, “Man she was a really hot looking chick 30 years ago” or “Gosh he was a Hunk back before he developed that Molson Muscle and Chrome Dome!”
Then it gets around to mortality:
“Where’s Jimmy?”…… “Dead!”
“Where’s Sue?” …… “Dead!”
Pretty Soon you stop asking, afraid of what the answer might be. You realize you have more runway behind you than ahead of you so you switch tactics.
“So how ya been?”…. After the medical histories have been explained and exchanged you change the topic to brag about the gene pool… 2 or three generations out… Far more rewarding subject.
I did it all but it overloaded my whole outlook on my life experience and what was fast approaching at end of the road. Post reunion I awoke early in the morning with a feeling of pressure and unease. Remembering a couple cardiac episodes from earlier in my glutinous years, my indulgence over the weekend, and all the dearly departed acquaintances. In my semi-wakefullness I thought, “Is this it? Is this in Fred Sandford terms, ‘The Big One’?”
Then coming fully awake I remembered indulging the previous evening in several handfuls of Green Snap Pea Pods. Gingerly with no sudden movements, I made my way out of the bed and to the facilities to take part in “the pause that refreshes”.
Granted another day, I look forward to continuing to taxi down the runway… onto the next reunion.
