Contributed by Lindsay Bowman

At future class reunions
We share our greetings, hugs, delighted grins.
Share jokes about receding hairlines, and
expanding families; stories of our wins,
the times we saved the day, or flubbed our hand;
of lives we’ve saved, or couldn’t, or are trying.
Yet,
beneath it all, an empty ache, we share
the pang of absence. Yours. An underlying
sense of loss, this terrible awareness
of the days you’ll never see, of friends
and loved ones left bereft. Of the unfairness
of a world in which your story ends,
of all that you had dreamed you would pursue.
If only we could share more time with you.