The Bimmer Years

 As I write this, taking a break from work for a few moments, Jessica is in the next room breaking up with a client. She is closing down her private practice, in women's health, at least the level that she can do with a physical office. So she is reaching out to her existing patients, some of whom she known for years since coming to Arizona.  Some of them have been with her a while. Some are out of state.

It reminds me of much of life is saying good-bye to people in various ways. One day you no longer see that person. Sometimes you know it at the time, sometimes not.

In my youth the good-byes were mostly due to geographical separation. Sometimes moving from one neighborhood to another, and changing schools, meant one day a friendship was over, never to be in contact again. 

For a season of my life, up to about ten years ago, I made it a point to overcome, at least temporarily, the good-byes of geography that had accumulated over the years.

At the same time, I had the distinct feeling that civilization was collapsing, because the bonds of social interaction were disintegrating due to social media. I wanted to see people before the madness set in, which it id.

I found victory in this. I found both great joy and also pain. Reunions are only temporary it seems, even when good, and definitely when bad.

My effort--the Bimmer years--could not be sustained in the form I had achieved. I am now rather fixed, and again find many limitations of fellowship due to geography. 

The last decades have brought an increasing load of separation due to death. That was rare and abstract in my younger years, experienced mostly vicariously, seeing my parents mourn the grandparents, whom I knew, but not intimately. Later were my own grandparents, who loved me, and whom I deeply loved---one by one they went from the early 1990s until the last one in the fall of 2010, the occasion of which sent me into some kind of mania to see everyone I knew again.