The Millennial Pedestrian

This poem was written for a college class reunion dinner. We’ve all been to a lot of reunions and a lot of dinners with speeches, but we recently lost a classmate in an especially sudden and tragic way and it seemed right to acknowledge that. At our age, death is becoming a slightly more familiar, awkward figure, lurking around the edges of conversations, uninvited and yet always showing up. But accidental death – the kind that simply descends into our lives with no warning before and no explanation afterwards – is especially unwelcome. As one friend noted, “There’s no learning from it.”

Passing

It means something different now.
Once it meant qualifying
for whatever came next.
Amassing passes
meant commencement,
a celebration.

Now when we say a friend has passed
we say it with sorrow.
We would rather see him not pass.
Not fail –
just not pass.

Some pass after long and labored struggle.
Other times, passing is sudden, shocking.
Those left back feel hurt, cheated
by the obvious unfairness.

But as grading never ends
we wonder what conclusions we should draw.
Work hard, follow rules, take statins;
lessen stress, practice Yoga;
or should we now be urgently unlearning
everything we learned to get to where we are?
And we wonder where that is, exactly.
Commencement seems a distant dream,
although we’re seniors.

To pass with honors, or at least some honor,
we must honor others:
those who’ve traveled with us in our lives
and shared themselves along the way.
How often we have tested them
with our bouts of doubt, episodes of ego,
and our follies – some of us boast
graduate degrees in folly.

For heaven’s sake let’s honor them at last.
They may pass before we do.
Imagine what we’d say if we could call them back.
Think of saying it now.
They shouldn’t have to pass
before we tell them they did well.
They will not hear our tributes
at their own commencements.