Every year visits to grandparents occur,
And the grandkids have “grown so much,”
And they need to “put bricks on their heads”.
Every year the family is updated about
The sports and the activities,
The good dates and the not-so-good dates
Of the previous year,
The births and baptisms,
The deaths and funerals.
Every year we endure the
Sometimes awkward, always long conversations
With the friends we see just once a year,
Maybe less, and every year we seem
To get further and further apart,
And the conversations are shorter,
Maybe even just a “Hey”, and you
Wonder why we can’t talk to these people anymore.
Why do people so close to us in heart become
So much more hard to communicate with in person?
Is it technology, fooling us into thinking
That we are connected to each other, when really
We don’t know each other at all?
Is it time, slowly eroding our years of
Memories and similarities, leaving us
Longing for the “good old days” instead
Of embracing the new ones?
Is the problem simply us;
Are we not willing to create new memories,
Go through the stresses of trying to forge
A new relationship when distance
Becomes an issue?
Maybe that is the problem.
Yet no one is willing to fix it,
So every year is the same.
I’ll probably be writing a poem about this
Next year.