After our 30-year high school reunion was over, my friend Cam Ward texted me: “last night was just a little like what I imagine heaven to be. So many good people I haven’t seen or thought of in so long, a flood of good memories” — along with a chance to “renew friendships” with so many.
That’s definitely not how reunions — especially a high school one — feel to everyone. For complicated reasons connected to stretched-thin modern lives and hurtful experiences in the past, a reunion like this can feel like the very last thing someone wants to do, even if they had the time and proximity to get there.
“Hell no, I will legit never go to a high school reunion,” one of my old friends responded during our attempt to let everyone know about the gathering.
Still, even for the many with some challenging memories of high school - isn’t that all of us?? - I made my best case for going to a reunion this summer. After all, what better chance to work through weird trauma in high school than by having new, positive experiences?
Those painful experiences don’t stop at high school, of course. And by a 20- or 30- or 40-year reunion, no one has their eyes closed to the heartache of life ….divorce, death, depression, anxiety, chronic illness, suffering children.1
For all these reasons, I respect why, for some, it feels safer to keep their distance from these kinds of gatherings.
Credit to Timothy Fisher for this and most of the other photos below, as well as for the video.
Making sure everyone knows they are remembered
I admit that I’d usually rather stay close to home with family. But there’s rarely another chance like a reunion like this to reconnect with so many old friends and make new friends you never got the chance to meet years ago.
What made this reunion different from any other for me was being part of the snowball recruiting effort involving 50+ people reaching out to let old classmates know.2
“I didn’t know anyone remembered me,” I heard multiple times. Even if they couldn’t make it, it felt good to let old classmates know they were invited, and remembered — and wanted.
But even for a guy like me who is a sucker for reunions, I was overwhelmed by the emotional experience of this one. Every once in a while, as we’d contact someone new, an impression would come — felt as much as heard — of how precious this person (and every person) was.
Overwhelmed by goodness
“I had so much fun seeing everyone — my heart was overwhelmed with their goodness,” Misti McSwain wrote afterward.
That sense of people’s goodness only expanded as I got to see classmates’ faces in person and embrace people whom my brain had long filed away.
Kody Knighton and I went to elementary school together. I remembered him as a tall friend with the flat-top who never said a whole lot, but was a steady fixture throughout my childhood. I was delighted to come across his picture online — and even more excited to get a chance to give him a hug at our “40 year elementary school reunion” and spend time in person - laughing together, complaining about politics and trading glimpses of kids facing health challenges.
Viewmont High School classmates who also went to elementary school together. I’m convinced memories from elementary school friends are filed away in a different, earlier part of our brains!
‘So much to love’
On the way to the 2nd night of the reunion, I listened to a line from Elder Gérald Caussé’s recent talk that captured my experience so well: “There is wonderful depth—so much to love—in every soul.”
That’s not just a cute line. It’s the truth. I know it in my bones — having felt it, over and over, even just at my high school reunion.
On the second night, I stood around watching people leave — but I didn’t want to go yet. There was something here I couldn’t quite place that felt so joyful.
The love of God has been described as “the most desirable above all things” and “the most joyous to the soul.”
In a small way, it feels like a reunion provides a small taste of what God feels — so much love, for so many precious people.
Kevin Wood was my first “best friend” in Kindergarten. And Josh Hiller ended up being one of my BYU roommates. So good to see these guys!
And maybe, even a glimpse of heaven itself3 — which Latter-day Saints describe as a continuation of friendship and family forever.
Anticipating this future heaven, Joseph Smith said in 1843, “That same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.”
That might explain why the day after the reunion ended — when so many of my classmates were clearly exhausted by all the work and planning and talking — recruiter extraordinaire Alan Christensen changed the name of our reunion committee text thread to “40-year reunion.”
He and I are ready to go! And why not? Feeling that kind of love, who would ever really want that to end?
Group shots of the picnic the first night and the more formal event the second.
If we could only see the true struggles each person faces, I think it would help us all feel so much more connected at a deeper level.
Also, the fact that we have so many differences in life experience and thinking makes gatherings like this that much more important. Where else in this country do you see people gathering intentionally and affectionately across so many political, ideological, theological differences?
We’re all busy - I get it. But the older I get, “getting things done” loses its thrill. What matters more are relationships, sharing love, building people up - letting others know they matter. That’s what a reunion is all about.
We started with close to 400 of the 636 people in our class without a confirmed contact. By the time we were done, we had reached all but 145 individually (so fun!!)
What’s your heaven? For some, heaven would be hiking alone in the mountains with their dog forever — for others, it might be an endless wild and crazy party. For me, I can’t imagine anything better than the sweetness of deep friendship and family love continuing forever.
