“The grieving begins 
the moment you 
hear the news.” 
Harold Ivan Smith

Every morning, I receive an email which includes the obituaries of those who have died in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before the era of email, I used to get this information by reading the daily newspaper. As far back as my college years, I recall scanning the obits for familiar names. On a fairly regular basis, I would recognize a name and read the obituary, which often confirmed that it was someone my parents knew or, perhaps, the grandparent of someone I knew. 

As time went on, the familiar names were often those of the parents of people I knew. In recent years, however, I’ve noted that many of those who have died are my age or younger. Not surprisingly, every now and then, the name of someone I grew up with shows up. Today was another one of those days. My Saint Gabriel School classmate, Jeanette Stark, died unexpectedly last month. Today’s obituary announced the services planned for her next week.

The death of a classmate is nothing new for members of the Saint Gabriel Class of 1968. Before we graduated from eighth grade, we lost three of our classmates — one in second grade and two in fifth grade. Through the years, we’ve lost several more. Today’s announcement of Jeanette’s death was yet another reminder of our own mortality.

I cannot claim to have been close friends with Jeanette. Since our graduation in June 1968, I’ve seen her once — at our 50th class reunion in 2018. What I remember about Jeanette is that she was one of the nicest girls in our class. Taller than the other girls, and many of the boys, too, Jeanette was a calming, friendly presence amidst the chaos of our junior high years. I recall her as being consistently kind, considerate, helpful, and compassionate towards those of us who struggled in those years. 

When I saw Jeanette at our reunion eight years ago, I was impressed to see that she was still very much as I remembered her. My conversation with her was brief, but she was incredibly cordial. After graduating from the University of San Francisco School of Nursing, Jeanette had a long, successful career, much of it working at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center on Clement Street. I can only imagine what a gift she must have been to that community.

This Sunday, I will be getting together with about a dozen of my eighth grade classmates for lunch at Capurro’s Restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf. This is something we do at the beginning of each calendar year. Through the rest of the year, we gather for picnics now and then. I am grateful for the women and men with whom I have reconnected from my elementary school days. I expect that all who attend Sunday’s gathering will do so with an increased awareness of how fortunate we are to continue to get together. No longer can we take anyone’s presence in our life for granted.