Gathering and Letting Go

 We are

essentially Hunter/Gathers.  We don't necessarily use those skills for the same reasons anymore.  It has been a long time since I went out and captured something for dinner.  However, I am on the hunt for cool and wonderful and life saving items and concepts and words and interesting things all the time. 

I love to watch and look and listen and discover.  It is something deeply embedded into my very being. 

One thing I gather are people.  People with interesting and varied lives. I love their stories and histories. I love digging deeply until I find the connection. The thing that makes us the same yet not the same.  For example, last night I had dinner with one friend and found out the server was the aunt of one of Mary-Elizabeth's friends.  I am sure we were at the same Graduation Party.   The threads that connect up are long and mixed up but they are real and are strong. 

We gather people all our lives.  The roll they play varies over the years but if we are lucky there is a continuity of great depth.  They know our stories and we don't have to explain too much. 

I also have hit a point in my life that I am loosing those very friends.  I learned of the deaths of two such people just yesterday.  Both were gone way before was necessary.  Both were in my life at various times and in various ways.  Those ways change but they were still there.  We still had a connection.  

This shedding of friends and family is much more painful then gathering.  I often wondered why Meb was so uncertain about making friends with her Cancer World buddies.  It is way too hard to loose people after 30 years of friendship let alone a couple of years. 

Here is to Alison Beck and Phil Caplan.  Both leaving in their 6th decade.  Way way too soon.