The Team Bus Wrecked

    About five years ago I joined facebook.  I'd been away from my small town for twenty years. Some of that time out of state.  I was sure a lot of my friends were also on-line probably talking behind my back.  For some reason, about 1980, people stopped writing letters.  Lately, email and things like facebook have revived that type of communication.  I like it.  I keep contact with people I haven't physically seen in 20 years or longer.  Nearly every posting from friends or acquaintances produces a smile, often a laugh or a sigh.  Nearly every.
    At first I didn't like it much.  I reached out to a life-long friend and kinda innocently asked what had happened in our little corner of the world in my 25 year absence.  In response I found  dozens of my friends and acquaintances had died one way or another.  I was devastated.  It felt like the team bus had crashed.  It took me a while to figure out just because I'd heard about these things all at once didn't mean they had happened all at once.  Just the natural consequence of a long life.  Still a deep disappointment.  I guess loss and disappointment are a feature of any long life. Most people realize that slowly with the years. I realized it in one afternoon.  Muy Malo.
    Here's another thing that kinda disappoints me.  People post their pictures just as I have.  Somehow it escaped me that people would age just as I have.  Somehow it seems wrong and possibly even my fault the years have kept up with them just as the years have overtaken me.  It seems wrong to see a nubile, fondly remembered person as a matronly grandmother.  It seems wrong to see the same wry smile of an old friend shining out from a grandfather's face, to see the once powerful arm at the side of and draped on a grandson or granddaughter.
    So now,  I'm back to the old guy experience of signing in to facebook and every couple weeks finding another friend has passed away.  Just like everybody else.  But I also find kids I remember as babies have graduated college, gotten married, had babies of their own, what have you.  The sort of things you'd find out if you maintained that old fashioned,  wide correspondence I always liked.
    I guess you could say, the more things change the more they remain the same.  It's true about everything else.  Why not this?  I dunno.
    It does pose a question.  Would you rather lead an insular life and after 30 years receive an email detailing all the sadness you had missed  or would you rather learn of the tragedies and the joys as they unfold, in their time?