School Reunions

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. One of this week’s Writer’s Workshop prompts is to write a post based on the word reunion. This reminded me of two reunions, one I actually attended and one I didn’t.

The reunion I did attend was for the school for the blind I had been a student at for my last three years of elementary school in the late 1990s. The reunion took place in 2008 and it was on school grounds. The reason the reunion was held, was the fact that many buildings would be reconstructed in the next couple of years, so as to give former students and staff one last chance to see school grounds in the form they’d remembered them.

The school included buildings for both elementary and secondary school, as well as homes for the residential students and a place for leisure activities where the non-residential students had lunch too. I was a non-residential student and only attended elementary school, like I said.

There were two reasons why I wanted to attend the reunion. One was to meet former fellow students and staff. That was a success. I met my best friend from school, with whom I hadn’t been in contact since leaving this school in 1998. I also briefly talked to my fourth grade teacher. That was awkward, as I didn’t feel comfortable disclosing to him that I resided in a psychiatric hospital at the time.

The other reason I wanted to attend the reunion, was to see the school in the form I remembered. That, unfortunately, wasn’t a success, because part of the elementary school, including the classrooms, had been destroyed in a fire in 2006. Part of the building was still standing, but it was no longer useable.

I was on grounds a few more times attending smartphone use training in 2017. On May 24, I believe, there’s going to be another reunion for this school, but it isn’t on grounds and I know no-one who will be attending, so I won’t either.

This brings me to my other reunion story. IN 2013, my high school celebrated 100 years of existence. I for a while considered attending, but was still in the psych hospital at the time and besides, my entire high school experience had been quite bad. So I didn’t go.

A few years later, I got an E-mail from a former teacher there. She had been my Dutch teacher and tutor for the first year and part of the second year of my attending this school, until she went on sick leave and finally found another job. She had been at the reunion and had wondered about me. Having read part of my website, she now understood why I hadn’t been at the reunion.

This, as it turned out, would also have been my last chance of meeting the teacher who’d become my tutor after the Dutch teacher left. He got cancer about a year after I’d graduated high school in 2005 and died in 2016. I am pretty sure it was for the better that he didn’t know that I was still in the psych hospital then.

15 thoughts on “School Reunions”

  2. I haven’t attended any of my school reunions. However, when my mother entered the local nursing home, I was constantly running into people I hadn’t seen since high school. Some of them I was happy to see, and some not.

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    1. Thanks for sharing. I can relate to not wanting to see anyone from my high school years again. Oh well, with the exception of my brother-in-law because he’s my sister’s husband. Then again I never attended classes with him.

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  5. I have been to a couple of high school reunions. It’s nice to reminisce about the past and those who have passed on. Some of the careers people chose can be surprising. One guy I was sure would end up behind bars became a lawyer–or is that an aspect of the same career? LOL

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  6. My 40 year class reunion is this summer. I likely will not go. Most of the class didn’t talk to me back then, why would I want to go and be ignored still. I just don’t need the headaches and stress. It is a shame the reunion of your school of the blind was not what you hoped for with the fire having damaged the area you would have remembered. I have found most people from the past we still want to see, we have somehow keep communication going for years. Good post!

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  7. The boarding school that I went to had a reunion a couple of years ago but I did not go to it. I figured I was not up for it. I did not want to meet old teachers and nuns and staff. X

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