being frank

The title for this post is part of a lyric from a song by Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel. Entitled Old Friends, it was featured in their album Bookends released in 1968. The full lyrical line goes:

Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly? How terribly strange to be 70…

Both Simon and Garfunkel were 27 at the time that song was released; it was meant to speculate the strangeness of reaching the age of 70 as old men. It’s a concept that has been a kind of universal rite of passage for many at that age; it certainly was for me when I was a teenager.

Yet when CeCe and I were married, the notion of growing old was turned on its ear; we actually looked forward to aging. It was an adventure we relished; an opportunity to defer the unavoidable aspects of growing old and focus instead on celebrating the best of who we would become in a future built day by day through creativity, love, sacrifice, determination, friendship, and collaboration. It was a way of honoring our love through a daily act of renewal. CeCe knew of my affinity for that song. And since I was going to be the first one to hit that milestone, she had plans to make it a special day of memories and laughter surrounded by her love and that of friends and family. But CeCe passed away just 30 days before my 70^th birthday, and the peculiarity of aging posed in that song long ago suddenly became my strange inevitability.

Such are milestones these days; they make their approach in a way that remind me that they’ve arrived without her. And as I found myself searching for that nugget of meaning that could soften the lingering sting of loss, I began looking in those places she taught me to explore; at the intersection of pomp and purpose where quiet rituals like the beginning of Spring intersect with the arrival of Easter and its soothing message of restoration.

You might be asking yourself, why bring up aging and loss on the eve of Easter? Well, because regardless of religious beliefs, this holiday is about renewal. It’s the season when both flora and fauna come to life after a long winter’s nap to celebrate the fertile cycles of nature as they return to Earth. It’s the universal time for celebrating renewal and rebirth. Yet in the world we inhabit these days, it’s as though everything is focused on a period of repression or neglect. There’s little growth to speak of, and the demise of what we thought of as permanent fixtures such as personal freedoms, alliances, truthfulness, and even courage seem to be marking the winter of our discontent.

How terribly strange to be here.

So for this Easter holiday, I wanted to share the notion of renewal; to use the symbolic aspects of this day to wish for a rebirth of those gifts of freedom, truth, courage, friendship, and love that have been perennial convictions in the hearts of every person. I wanted to share a wish to reinvigorate the imagination of people everywhere with the possibility for hope, understanding, and reason. To rejuvenate the ideals of equality, harmony, strength, and trust that have stood as the bedrock of our convictions since the beginning. Ideals that don’t require constant proof or blind allegiance, just our trust and our bond in and for one another.

Finally, and with all deference to Simon and Garfunkel, I wanted to leave you with a paraphrased version of that one memorable line:

Can you imagine us not long ago, shedding our freedoms willingly? How terribly strange to live silently...