Sad As Midnight Approaches

This evening I was swept with a wave of nostalgia and longing for students gone on to better things—and more than a few from OASIS (Older Adult Service and Information System) to the world we cannot know from this place. I was showing a current class of public relations students a video I was involved with in the mid 1990s; it documented the Lake Ridge Academy/OASIS Intergenerational Arts Projects. A segment of that video focused on my own class. My intention in showing it was to point out some elements of documentary making. Unexpectedly, my heart just began to grieve and I had to keep myself from crying; luckily, some of the video is just plain fun and funny. I miss Florence, Betty, Olive, Sanford, and others not in that group, such as Fran, Paula, Miriam. My heart aches for them even as I recognize the rare privilege I had in serving as their teacher. The hardest thing about making true friends is letting them go. I have counted these wonderful writer-storytellers among the aunts and uncles and extended family I never knew due to historical tragedy, geographical dispersion, and isolation. I pray that their spirits have found peace, perhaps even a way celebrate language and love in all worlds, here and there, now and then, forever and forever.