I will remember you...

I just had a nap. I don’t know if I had some deep dream or something, or if maybe it’s the Battlestar Galactica episode I watched before my nap interacting with the openness that the subconscious state brings, but I find myself awake now and in a reflective mood.

Part of the Facebook experience is seeing your friends list grow, finding a place to communicate with the classmates, coworkers, family members and other miscellaneous people who brighten our lives (MSTers, this includes you, you special teacher folk you) as well as a place to reconnect with and recognize those who have shared our life experiences in the past (this includes all you people I haven’t seen since the Ice Gardens, Tyndale, Woburn or even CHPS). I think part of the reason Facebook has taken off to the extent that it has is the warm fuzzy feeling people get from looking at their friends list, and the significance they get to feel when someone adds them as a friend, saying, “I remember you!”

However, I don’t think I’m the only one who sees gaps in her friends list. We’ve all lost people along the way. Hmm, that sounds morbid, and there have been those we’ve lost in that final kind of sense—for example, I flipped through my high school yearbooks recently to find one of the other teacher candidates who is working at Agincourt C. I. with me (Connie Lam, class of 2002), and was reminded by a tribute page of the passing of Vish, who was not a personal friend of mine but may have been one of yours—but that is not what I mean. I’m talking about the girl who made it clear to me (though never directly in words) at one point in high school that she no longer wanted me around, for whatever reason. I’m talking about the friendships I started to see as more-than-friendships and pushed too far, losing friendships I valued as a result. I’m talking about those friends who moved away and I failed to keep in touch with in the way I wanted to in the midst of all I busied my life with. I’m sure there are other categories, but that’s a sampling of what I mean.

Such passages are a necessary part of life; I can’t imagine trying to keep in touch with all the people I’ve ever met. Such losses are still sad in their own little way. Let’s take a moment at the beginning of March Break (for those of us who get to experience it, hooray—sorry, that was irrelevant, but I'm happy to be on vacation :)) to remember those we’ve left behind. I’m raising my glass; here’s to you.

Okay, enough of that; hubby wants to watch some TV with me now. Catch y’all later.