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Graduates: Let friends know your feelings
By George Valadie
May 2 , 2008
    My family was abuzz last week.
    Our eldest daughter got an exciting new job opportunity, and though it should have been, that wasn’t the reason. And it seems like the youngest will pull an A in her night class, but that wasn’t it either. Nancy was the target of a really nasty phone call at her job by a really insulting jerk of a human being. I came home to find her choosing between a glass of wine or a shot of blood pressure medicine but that wasn’t it either.
    We’re a much shallower family than that.
    “Grey’s Anatomy” was finally coming back to Thursday night TV for five new episodes. I could say it was all those females in the clan – but I’ll admit I’m right in there, too.
Every May, the TV networks dedicate quite a bit of their advertising time to promote their own shows. It’s that time of year when the words “Season Finale” get repeated again and again. With the best of the best, the writers find a way to leave us hanging.
    On rare occasion, we’re even blessed with a television classic. We’ve all known those few successful shows that have remained entertaining for an atypical number of years (more than one). For whatever reason, these storylines and characters have been engaging enough to have survived an ever-changing culture, our evolving taste, the flood of cable and the drought of writers’ strikes.
    But – as do all good things – even the masterpieces come to an end. And when they do, the networks devote more energy to turn the annual “Season Finale” into an even more blockbuster “Series Finale.”
    Recall the final episodes of “M*A*S*H” and “Seinfeld,” “Friends” and “The Sopranos” – the list goes on. By all counts, these rank among the most watched TV programming in history.
    In a way that’s hard to describe, we hate when these shows go away because we feel like it’s not just the show that’s leaving, it’s the people, as if they were real.
    Think back to your own favorite. Admit it, we’re right in there with them. We curse at the set when they’re stupid and we grieve the character who shockingly dies. For the greatest writers, it begins with us watching with our eyes; but it always ends with us relating with our emotion.
    So when they no longer drop by for their weekly visit into our living rooms, for a while anyway, we’re left with that feeling of needing to know more.
    Where did they move and who married whom? Were they successful, did their relationships work out, did their lives work out? Did they stay close friends or have they even stayed in touch? Will they ever get together again? And if they do, can we come?
    So here we are – kicking off this month of May endings when so many in our nation will celebrate a different sort of “series finale.” Graduation.
    This is the sort of student finale where the story’s end actually is hanging and, in much the same way, many of us won’t ever get to know how it does. Their families (the writers if you will) will have access to how it all turns out. But many of us will not.
    Through the years, they’ve woven their way into our hearts and now we’re going to miss them. And we just have to know more. The unanswered questions are much the same. As teachers or friends, alumni or onlookers, mostly, we’ll just wonder.
    But perhaps worst of all, it’s the students themselves who get left out of so many of the endings. Not their own, those of their friends.
    As much as I love presiding over our yearly procession of very proud and deserving graduates, it’s as if I can also feel the sadness they don’t yet know they will someday have.
    Though I watch them hug and hear them promise, I wonder – no, I worry – if they actually will stay in touch. We get to have so few friends in our lives, how can we let them, even one of them, get away?
    Every year, I hope they’ll be better at it than I have been. Every year, I hope they can avoid the stuff of life getting in their way as I’ve allowed it into mine. For myself, I never imagined so many of those very good friends would or could fall out of my life.
    But truthfully, most all were allowed to slip away. Last week, my mom told me about the recent death of a high school classmate’s mother. It’s getting easier to imagine so I felt compelled to reach out. I sat down to pen a brief note and realized I hadn’t seen, spoken to or even written to her in some 15 years.
    I encourage each class of grads to reach out. Do it now. Find some way, any way – to let your friends know your feelings.
    The spoken word doesn’t come easy, it never has. Teens may find themselves tongue-tied and stumbling and it might even come across more embarrassing than sincere. But I believe it’s worth a shot. Or, they could write it all down. Make it the best thing they’ve ever written, pour it out from the heart and say what you hope they know, but you never said.
    Is it too late to work for us old folk too?
    The series may end. Do the friendships have to?
    Dear God – Of all your greatest hits, it’s the gift of friendship that’s the #1 best seller. May our collection just grow and grow. Amen.
(George Valadie is president of St. Benedict at Auburndale School in Cordova, Tenn.)

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