In My Life (I’ve Loved You All)

I have never been one of the popular people, and I in fact I have often valued books over people, and yet I am fortunate enough to have had many dear friends and family members in my life.

It all seemed so simple when I was young: my friends were those I knew in the neighborhood or went to school with. I saw them most every day. My family was my four siblings and two parents, and since there were no other relatives living in the same state, we spent our entire holidays together as a family. My larger family mostly lived in Canada, and we would visit them once a year and many aunts and uncles and cousins would come to visit us at our Grandmother’s and we would visit them in return.

But then my older siblings grew up and started families of their own. For a time it simply meant that my family was growing, but Christmas gatherings now took place on Christmas Eve and few of us were around on Christmas Day. After high school, the old gang seemed to slip away one by one where I would see them less and less. But it was okay, because I knew I’d see them around some time. We were young and we had the rest of our lives to run into each other and get reacquainted. And besides, I was meeting new friends through work and encouraging some of my old friends to get a job with me.

But few people stay long at their first jobs, and before long I not merely had a group of friends but groups of friends, making it harder to keep in touch with all of them. And brothers and sisters understandably were busy with the families they were starting. I understood this fully when I found myself with a wife and a child of my own. Now my wife and I were both busy with our jobs and our son and trying to make it to every birthday and holiday for both our families. This is the time of our lives when we have the maturity to attempt to maintain family connections and the energy to get it done. But it ages us, stretches us apart among the various groups of people we have history with, connections to, and love for. At some point, invariably, the distances become too great and the hours in the day too few. We let people slip from our lives with nothing more than the occasional thought and good intention.

Then comes the day when you realize you have mostly accomplished your job as a parent, and your son lives halfway around the world with a wife and daughter that mean so much to him. But you’re still busy and work still takes up so much of your waking hours. I often find myself at work thinking of all the people I have known and the wonderful times we have had, and I wonder if and when we will ever find the time to catch up. I have a friend a mere seven blocks from where I live who I haven’t talked to in years. I have no idea where our mutual friend currently resides, though I had a dream about him recently and was so very happy to see him in it.

What’s worse is that even when I am spending time with someone I love, I find myself thinking of someone I’ve been neglecting. There is always someone I care deeply about that I feel I owe a visit. There are so very many people I care about that I think about more than I talk to.

And of course, when I am visiting someone, I often think about my dog at home alone. Or my wife. The problem is there is no longer any center, no place where I and all my family can gather together and call home. There is no empty lot where my friends and I just know to go to where we can all hang out or play games. Everybody’s scattered. We are like a worn out net with too many stretched and broken threads, letting too many people and too much time pass between us.

I suppose I should feel grateful that my life has been touched by so many, and that I still have so many people in my life who I think about. It’s just that I feel a sense of guilt that I am not there more for them. I’ve never been the kind to reach out to others. Valuing private time myself, I hesitate to bother anyone who is surely busy with their own lives. I miss the days when we never hesitated to call someone up or knock on their door, even when it was obvious they had company over. Back then, even though we had what seemed like all the time in the world, we never wasted it.

I realize now that the future that seemed to spread out far enough to provide time for every conceivable reunion with family and friends is not nearly large enough. It seems a cheap way to express my appreciation, but I’d like you all to know I think of you often, sometimes when I am at work, sometimes in my dreams, sometimes when I am with other people. And most definitely when I am writing. Even now it occurs to me I haven’t walked my dog yet today. And I owe my brother a call. And that my son’s family’s visit home from abroad will be brief and my time off from work scant.

Know that I love you all. I hope to see you soon.