At first glance this is a rather depressing poem, but I tend to view it differently. After all, loss is part of life and even though the author bemoans the fact that they are all gone at least he had the chance to know those old familiar faces. I know, it’s a real “glass is half full” type attitude that stands in stark contrast to the fact that the final line of each stanza hits you with the force of a funeral dirge.

This poem always reminds me of my grandfather - on his last birthday he looked at me with something akin to wonder in his eyes and said “Ninety Years Old!” with the oddest inflection, a mix of amazement, sadness, curiosity, and resignation. I remember wondering - I still wonder - what it must be like to have lost all of your friends and many of the places that defined you.

Yet despite all that he still had a zest for life. When I found pictures of the soldiers who went to war with him he was able to name and tell a story about nearly every one of them. He would speak of his friends on the boats he sailed with on the lakes. He would tell us stories of the men he worked with at the Cleveland Zoo when he was a teenager, stories of caring for Balto the hero-dog of Iditarod fame. Finally, when my mother gently suggested to him that we consider hospice he looked at her and simply said “I want to live”; that statement drove my reading of “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” at his funeral.

Given that, I hope you see that even though on the surface it seems a bit odd to use this to commemorate a reunion with my good friends in Pennsylvania, it’s really not.

The Old Familiar Faces

BY CHARLES LAMB

I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a love once, fairest among women;
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her —
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood.
Earth seemed a desart I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father’s dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces —

How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.