✽elle écrit✽: For Jane Mulally Olson

Visitation Class of 1965

For Jane Mulally Olson

Forty-five Years

Come, stitch together memories,

we'll weave a story of the years

and the kinship we have shared.

School brought us together,

we watched each other grow.

Now we are forever connected

by a small crescent-shaped

piece of the past.

Who can forget high school,

where, stumbling and stammering,

we first began adult life.

Most of the good life has offered

is behind rather than ahead;

but for now, for blessed now, there's laughing

and remembering and celebrating to do.

Instead of gray hair and wrinkles,

let's choose instead to see ourselves

as the sleek young women we once were.

Life after graduation was richly embroidered

with adventure and divergent experiences:

careers, college, marriage, babies, divorce,

new husbands, more babies, new careers.

There was always something challenging waiting.

Then, suddenly, there were major changes,

adjustments and rearrangements.

Children grew up and left home,

parents died, we became grandparents,

spouses retired, we retired.

Through it all, we stayed strong and alive.

Until this past spring. On April 28,

our friend and classmate, Jane Mullaly Olson, died,

the first of us to go. Jane touched all our lives,

some for a brief moment, others lost a life-long friend.

Remember Jane's story, how she lived her life

with joy in spite of adversity and sickness.

And remember too, there are still more chapters

to be written for the Class of 1965,

not for school, but for life.

✽elle écrit✽