Last year Danie and I attended his 50th matric reunion at their school in Heidelberg. I was amazed to see how these old school friends, had over the years kept in contact with one another. I watched as everyone tried to catch up on "old times." They had all aged, some well and some not so well. I was intrigued at how good some of them still looked after all those years.
On our way back home, I was lost deep in thought. Where were all my old school friends? I had absolutely no idea! I had left school after matric in 1968, married a year later and just carried on with my life. I became a mother at 21 and at the age of 26 had three daughters. I was just too busy living my life, to think about old friends. Now after 42 years I suddenly wondered what had happened to everyone, and shared my thoughts with Danie. "Well" he said, "Why don't you see if you can find them?" Thus the whole scenario of a Matric Reunion was born.
Where does one start? My first stop was Face Book! Hmmmm there I found a few, but not many as most of us would be in our 60's and not computer literate! Then, I found some by searching through the faces of young people my children's ages, and trying to see the similarity of either mother or father in them via our Year Book! This was very time consuming as I wrote to many young people on Face Book - "Hello sorry to trouble you, but was your mother so and so or was your father so and so, and were they in Frans du Toit High School in Phalaborwa?" Most of the time the answers came back "No, good luck!" But I did hit a few jackpots.
I Googled names, wrote to companies and as the list grew, old friends gave leads and numbers and so I progressed slowly but surely. This year, on 16th October, we will be having our reunion on our farm. Everyone is excited to see each other again, and even our head girl is flying out from the UK to attend. I asked each one to send me a life history with photos of their families, and so did a presentation of each life and emailed them one by one to the group.
While doing these searches, it was shocking to hear of how many of the friends were no longer with us. So many had died, some from cancer, some in accidents, some had committed suicide, some from alcohol ... so sad. Some had died very young, and when you hear this, you realise how blessed you are!
Many of the old friends have done so well for themselves. Some have their own companies, one is an orthopaedic surgeon in Canada, some have travelled the world, quite a few have conquered cancer and are in remission, some have just had a good life .... others have not. Some are still married to their teenage loves, some have divorced, some have lost their spouses.
For those I could find ... I cannot wait to see everyone again! I am sure we have all changed in stature and character, but I am sure we will have a blast catching up on the 42 year gap!
