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January 2025

Remembering What Was Lost — and Finding What Remains

I recently sat in the Goodell living room with the group of neighbors who started Pasadena Village. I felt their friendship, warmth, and comfort — the anticipation of change, and the shared desire to keep this neighborhood group together as family and friends.

It was a dream, of course, but it felt very real in the moment.
It was also, in a way, an effort doomed from the very beginning. Time, with its voracious appetite, showed this when it took Jim Goodell from the group in 2014 — within just two years of the Village’s founding.

Lately, I’ve felt that same passage of time in a deeply personal way. This current year, I have experienced the loss of five friends. Those losses closed off different chapters of my life — each a reminder that entire segments of my past are now sealed away.

David was a friend from my college years. A very successful businessman, he used his success with great generosity. He helped every member of his family get the education they needed to pursue their own paths. He was also a wonderful personal friend — sharp-witted, warm, and full of humor.

Jerry was a friend from my Navy years — a very different period of my life. That group of Navy friends has stayed in touch for decades, and we’ve been meeting monthly for several years via Zoom. But our group is dwindling. Jerry had been open about his battle with throat cancer, which we knew would not end well. His passing was still a surprise despite the anticipation, because the finality of death always feels like a surprise — no matter how much you know it’s coming.

Three other friends were from my earliest days.
Bill is a friend I’ve known for 87 years. We met as toddlers in strollers when our mothers walked together. Later, our families moved just two houses apart, and we grew up together through high school as very close friends.
Jack joined that friendship in fourth grade, when we moved to our new house after the war and my father returned home from New Guinea.
Alan became a friend in junior high school, and we stayed in touch off and on through the years.

After high school, we all went in different directions but stayed connected through reunions and later by email. Jack lived in Southern California — one of the only two people I knew here when I moved out — but by then he had already begun a decline into dementia.
Alan lived in Tennessee. When I called him recently, I learned that he had lost his wife and moved into a retirement home, but he seemed to be doing well. After I lost Jack, I called Alan again to tell him I thought we were the only two left — but this time, I got the “phone disconnected” message. Following up, I learned that he had died shortly after our last conversation.

My longest-term friend, Bill, I discovered earlier this year, had been moved into a memory care unit after some health issues disrupted his life. When I spoke with him, his voice sounded strong and upbeat. But when I asked about his parents, he told me they were still living in the same house where we had grown up — and that they planned to stay there as long as they could. They, of course, have both been gone for many years.

Knowing each of these friends has enriched my life in lasting ways. Their friendships filled chapters that are now closed. It’s as if whole sections of my story have gone silent — and I am now the only living person who remembers them. I still have family in Shreveport, which connects me to many of those memories — but the shared experiences, the laughter, the familiar voices, are gone now.

So how do these losses relate to my experience in Pasadena Village?

The Village offers me something profoundly important — opportunity.
The old friends are gone. Nothing can bring them back, and nothing can bring back the memories we shared together. But the Village provides access to new people who can become friends — and some of them may become very close friends. They don’t replace the old friends, but they add new warmth, new stories, and new meaning to the present.

The Village also offers opportunities to explore unrealized parts of yourself — interests that were never pursued, talents that were never developed, experiences you’d never thought to try. It gives each of us the chance to shape a new section of life in ways that meet our current needs.

Many parts of our old lives can be woven into our new ones, but others are gone forever. With the Village, though, we can learn new ways to do the old things we can no longer do in the same way — and discover entirely new things to do that we’ve never done before.

Being a Villager enriches my current life with friendship, purpose, and activity. It offers the structure and encouragement to keep learning, growing, and connecting — even after so much loss.

I feel a deep and abiding sense of gratitude toward Pasadena Village for helping me navigate this season of life — for reminding me that while time takes away much, it also gives us the chance to begin again.

And now I see that what once felt like a doomed effort was anything but. The dream that began in the Goodell living room has not only endured — it has expanded and strengthened. The Village stands as proof that even in the face of loss and change, something beautiful and lasting can grow. The effort that seemed fragile at the start has paid off in something profoundly valuable: a living, breathing community that continues to carry forward the original dream — stronger than ever.