Same Time, Next Year

Three of my husband’s oldest and dearest friends were in town this week and we all met at the Sculpture Park. They were killing two birds with one stone---seeing me and the new Japanese garden at the same time. I didn’t mind. It was a sunny day at a beautiful setting that is ranked in the top 100 most-visited art museums in the world and three of us are arty-farty types. Before we explored the new Japanese addition, we took a half hour, narrated tram ride around the 158 acres that took us past many of the 200 permanent pieces in the park. I’ve been on the tram many times but it was only my third time going to the 8 ½ acre Japanese addition. 

Once inside the gates to the Japanese Gardens, we found a private ‘alcove’ near the Zen garden that overlooks the lake and the zig-zag bridge and we sat on polished marble bounders talking about the good times we’ve had over the years. And there have been many. Parties, vacations, raft races and just a hanging out over pizza. Don and these three had been friends since junior high and even though two of them haven’t lived here for thirty years they’ve all stayed close. I feel honored that after Don died they still include me on their ‘must see’ list when they come up from Georgia. And it’s always fun to be with people who knew my husband before his stroke. Knowing Don is like shorthand for knowing me. Unfortunately, there aren’t many people left in their families to bring them back to town, so I couldn’t help feeling like this might be the last time I’ll see them. Ohmygod, taking in our physical conditions---one guy in a wheelchair, the other woman badly needing a hip replacement, her husband fighting cancer and me with my snow white hair and old-lady sweater in the summer---one of us might not be alive same time, next year. 

Seeing these people every summer for so many years it can’t help but remind me of the 1951 movie with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn, titled Same Time, Next Year. They played a couple who for over twenty-five years would met once a year for a romantic tryst and along the way they managed to develop an emotional depth they hadn’t expected. Not sure if it would work that way in real life for lovers, what with the guilt thing and suspicious spouses getting in the way, but I know for a fact that for life-long friends emotional depth can be maintained long-distance. 

Paul McCartney once wrote: 

Must we wait another year

For the celebration, dear?

If we do, we’ll hold it here,

Same time next year.

I'll be here, the same as ever,

Maybe wearing something else.

Ah, but nothing changes,

Ah but nothing changes.

Wrong, Paul! Everything changes from year to year, especially once you get past seventy. Sometimes it’s even hard to recognize people who’ve been in your life for decades. But I know what he meant. The warm feelings don’t change. The love and respect doesn’t change. But the melancholy of saying goodbye hits you harder when you get older, knowing that a wonderful afternoon like I had this week could be our last one together. At least until one of us dies. We all have cemetery plots right next door. It tickled my husband’s sense of humor to think about being neighbors in death.

After spending three hours at the park the four us went to a restaurant/bar in my adopted hometown. The others have been going there since their teens and a trip to Michigan always includes a pilgrimage to eat their “famous” hot dogs that aren’t that good in my book. But you don’t mess with an iconic place so deeply engrained in someone’s mind. Like I told them when they asked about the other hot dog place in town and I said, “Their dogs are better but you guys don’t come here for the food. It’s the memory triggers of this place that makes it special.”

And with that, this widow can report the ending of another day filled with laughter, a sincere appreciation of beautiful people, relationships, things and places plus a few melancholy thoughts wondering if we’ll still be all together this time, next year.  ©