OK, the title of this post might be a bit morose, given that the subject is my upcoming 30th high school reunion, for which I fly out tomorrow. I graduated in 1978 from Cholla (pronounced “choy-a”) High School in Tucson, Arizona, having grown up in a neighborhood roughly one-third Black, one-third Anglo, and one-third Mexican-American. I look forward to seeing old friends, renewing acquaintances, and maybe meeting new spouses who are more appealing than the classmates they married. Plus, I have better hair now than I did in the late ’70s, when my attempts at a Dorothy Hamill-style wedge were sadly fruitless. Even comedic, and not at all helped by the wire-rimmed aviator frames that managed to look cool on everyone else but resembled welding goggles on me.
Humor aside, though, it’s a poignant time for me. Too many of my classmates, some of them kids I went to school with from first grade on, won’t be there. Nicky died of AIDS, Marvin got shot to death in the last few months of his battle with cancer, David died mysteriously, Pam got shot by her father and is likely too crippled to attend, Kevin got killed drag racing, Kelly is in and out of prison, Jacinta drifted away, Raymond is serving a prison term for attempted murder, and many more than I can list got lost along the way. Crime, drugs, and violence have taken a lot of the friends I grew up with and loved; my childhood, while difficult, was at least free from the violence that too many of my classmates lived with.
By the time I was about 15, I knew several kids who’d been shot — Martha, Pam, Jorge — and some of the best and brightest escaped violence only to drown in drugs and alcohol, or be drowned by abuse from the bad men they married. I wonder what happened to Erasmo, a T’ohono O’odham Indian whose family lived in a hut by the river and told time by the sun, or to Gloria, who couldn’t come to school sometimes because there weren’t enough shoes in the family to go around. I grieve how Alvin got left behind long before the term came into vogue and at a time when no one particularly cared what a developmentally delayed, fatherless, poor African-American kid ended up doing. I wonder about Ruby, one of the brightest girls I ever knew, who traded on looks when smarts didn’t seem to gain her entry into the marketplace of success, or Theresa, who sang like an angel but sang from a hell we could only begin to comprehend. And I weep when I’m reminded of Barbara Jean and David, whose athleticism defined them without propelling them out of poverty, and Victor and Peeto, whose charm wasn’t enough to stave off the demons of drug use. They should be there, and they won’t be. That makes me sad, and it makes me determined to speak out for those who weren’t born with the advantages I had, and who deserved the chance to write these words instead of being the subject of them.
And so I won’t be blogging much in the next week, but if you’re a praying sort, please pray for the ones who won’t be at the reunion, and not because September in Tucson didn’t seem like such a great idea.