The past is trying to catch up with me.

Today someone I never knew or knew of wrote to me to ask if I knew where a long lost mutual friend of ours is. The mutual friend was an internet friend, someone with a huge heart. She was very supportive of Heavenletters from the beginning. Where is she? Where has she gone? What has happened to her?

No one seems to know. This missing friend was very dear to me and to many, and no one knows where she is. It’s like she dropped off the planet. I feel like not a good friend to have lost her.

And then this week also a young college graduate I helped with job search in 1994 emailed me. He was a kid then. It was thirteen long years ago that we put our heads together. He remembered me, and I had forgotten him. Long ago he moved to Australia and married. He found me on the internet. I do remember him. He was a great guy, but for me it had been out of sight, out of mind. And suddenly, we’ve reconnected.

People from the past seem to keep recurring. There are two more, one with a good ending, and one that didn’t end so well.

An old girlfriend from maybe thirty years ago and I had barely kept in touch. We had each other’s email addresses, and that was about it. I knew her when her children were little. She had seven children all close together. Recently, somehow, we started corresponding. Her first child, a darling responsible little girl, is now thirty-one years old, and I feel in a time warp. This friend is going to try to come visit here before I leave for Argentina. I really didn’t know she was ever fond of me. I also didn’t know she subscribes to Heavenletters! I guess we just never know who’s who and what’s what.

Then today I bumped into an old friend at Everybody’s, the whole foods store here. We used to be really happy to see each other. Today I saw that she hardly looked at me. I was a fly on the wall. Whatever friendship we had had was gone, just vanished. And yet I tried. Why did I? Got kinda snubbed and my feelings hurt.

So, you see, people from the past seem to keep cropping up. I haven’t even mentioned the people from my past that I think about, often for no reason and with great longing.

So, God, I’m not doing great on letting go of the past, yet soon I will be stepping out of it with a new beginning in Capilla del Monte, Argentina. I want to start over. Is such a thing really possible? Or do I take me with me wherever I go?