Reunions

Summers are full of reunions....class reunions, family reunions - people reuniting, "coming together again after a long absence".  Funerals and wedding are reunions too, a gathering of family and friends to witness life's milestones.

Gathering, reuniting, congregating, meeting up...it is in our nature to want to connect with those we love and care about. Finding our 'people' in order to reminisce and remember, to support and affirm us, to laugh and cry together - in doing so we find comfort, solace, ease - we find ourselves.  When the world is spinning our of control there is something about a reunion that grounds us, brings us back to who we are, where we come from, who we come from.

This summer celebrated the twenty-year reunion of Camp Heartland, a camp for kids affected by HIV that my family was a part of for twelve of those years.  It was fun to see the photos of the now-adult faces of those scared but oh-so-brave campers and to see the then-college-student counselors' partners and children.  I yearned to get the hugs, meet the family members and hear the what-have-you-been-up-to? stories, to remember the campers not there, but in spirit.  Life happens though (I  was at the birth of my sweet grandson) and I didn't get a chance to attend the reunion, to reunite, at least not this time...

This summer Hearts of Hope Teen Retreat campers will get a chance to reunite. This reunion is inspired by those teens who showed up at a grief camp hanging behind their family, with gritted teeth and rolling eyes, not AT ALL excited to be there - and by the end of the retreat, they don't want to leave! Going home, back to their 'normal' lives knowing they had met and spent time with other teens who 'got it'.  Who got what it felt like to have a parent die, a sister or a best friend.  Teens who connected with the stories they told, memories they shared and cried and laughed about (yes, there's lots of laughter at a grief camp). We are planning on reuniting those teens on August 8 & 9 at Camp Esquagama near Virginia, MN - call our office 218-372-8420 for more details.

And just like any reunion, once the last piece of watermelon is eaten, the last homecoming game story is told, once all the memory have been shared or the bridal bouquet begins to wilt, we yearn.  Yearn to be there again, to go back, to re-live the moments. We yearn to see the people we love one last time, we yearn for the life that was...

But even if we could go back, even when we do reunite, it's never quite the same - it can't be.  Life is constantly changing and often unfair, life is full of regrets and full of hope, life causes us to curse sometimes and pray more often at other times, life is full with memories and full of dreams - the stuff of reunions - AND life is right now, what is happening in this moment that will make up the stuff of future reunions - be sure to live it fully.