“You haven’t changed in thirty years,” a friend whom I had seen only rarely during that time told me last weekend. At first, I felt taken aback by her remark. Did it mean that I was no better than then or, simply, that I was no worse? Was it possible that I had remained the same old fellow without any of the self-improvement toward which I had expended a fair amount of effort?

Probably my friend was just being conventionally kind. She meant to say that I had remained someone for whom she still feels respect and affection. Had she made the remark to anyone but a gerontologist, her statement would no doubt have stayed unexamined for deeper meaning. For someone who sifts the aging experience for significance the way I do, however, my friend’s compliment seemed faintly troubling.

All of us who gathered for that weekend in Poughkeepsie, New York had obviously changed over the years. Some thirty in number, we had come to renew friendships formed back in Cambridge during the mid to late sixties and the early seventies. Those were heady days, full of turmoil as well as hope, and we still had not taken the measure of that history.

Not all who came to spend parts of three days together belonged to the original group of graduate students and others who knew one another in Cambridge. Some had acquired spouses in the interim, and several had brought their children with them. In fact, this situation posed a question for the group: would the new people be able to relate to those who had been friends for so long?

A positive answer to this question was made easier by an initiative taken by Molly, one of our hosts. She had urged us all to write short bios about ourselves and our families and distribute them beforehand  by email to everyone who was invited. This inspired device not only helped dispense us from the conventional questions about where we live and what kind of work we do, but it provoked some moving statements about people’s lives.

Fred, another of our hosts, revealed in his memoir details of a life-threatening disease that he has been struggling with over the past two years. Readers of this statement could not help but feel for him and his family in their courageous attempts to carry on a normal life at work and at home.

Sharon, a former college professor, had indicated  that both she and her husband John had been through some “medical interludes” but their chief focus was establishing a music school for people like their nineteen-year-old son who has Williams syndrome. (Those affected by this disease have serious neurological disabilities, but also unusual sensitivity to music.) Sharon’s work in responding to the needs of her son and others by founding the school stirred the admiration of those who read it.

A Eucharistic liturgy led by one of our number, a Franciscan priest, brought the weekend to a climax. At one point, we sang the Latin hymn “Where charity and love abide, there God is.” These words gave expression to the warm feelings that members of our core group still feel for one another and for those who have joined us in the intervening years. The heartfelt, affectionate embraces that marked the kiss of peace showed forth these feelings of love and affection.

That an informal reunion of this sort, with a core group of people who had known one another well and a fair number of others who had not, could produce such unity came as a welcome surprise. That we had all aged and looked different as a result was obvious; that we would all care that much about one another and have such a rich time together was not predictable.

I attribute this success largely to two factors. First, not a few members of the group are people of extraordinary human vitality and warmth of character. To mention only those who conceived the idea of coming together in the first place and then planned the event, Molly and Fred, Clara and Gabriel are filled with human understanding, expressive emotions, and feeling for other people. Just being in their presence is good for the heart. Their affections clearly influenced the emotional tone of our time together.

The second factor, I believe, is spirituality. Most of us share the same spiritual tradition and it is amazing how much that helps. The liturgy showed that the deep bond established long ago still holds us together. The spiritual experiences that we shared in the past still exert an influence on us now. And, because of the joys and sufferings that we have all tasted over the past thirty years, the spiritual ties that bind us together have become both deeper and broader.

Richard Griffin