With a population under seven thousand, everyone knows everyone. Your neighbors know about your past breakup. Your priest knows you failed your statistics exam. Your first-grade teacher knows about your fight you had with your mom and even when you leave for college, your youth group leader still knows when you make it on the Dean’s List. Yet, with no secrets comes an endless support system. A tight-knit group of people, some you like, some you don’t. But in the end, you all share your love for the town that raised you.
You grow up with the neighborhood children. The same ones that will chase a soccer ball around the yard with you. The same children that know each other from the awkward, pre-puberty braces phase, to the figuring out what college you will go to phase. With memories and tears and laughs, growing up in a small town was a blessing and I am happy to have these “small town roots.”
Sadly, I’ve seen too many heartbreaks in the same town I’ve seen so much love and laughter from. With the passing of far too many beloved peers, and the recent passing of a teacher that touched all of our lives, I am forced to reflect on life and the temporary-ness of everything in it. We mourn together, we cry together, and we grow together. It is the closeness of everyone in this town that makes the pain a little more bearable. And whether you have graduated and left, moving on to bigger and better things, you’ve been stuck in the same town for the past 20 years, or you only were a part of the town for two years, you’ve always got some small-town in you. Here your heart remains.
I’m not saying that the small farm town heals all the hurt, but when we hurt, we hurt together, and when we heal, we heal together. All of us, as individuals can work together to bring joy out of pain. Right now, my heart is the heaviest it has been, filled with sadness and anger, denial and shock; and in two weeks my heart will probably still hurt. But I know that my town has overcome. My town has fallen before and we always rise again.
Small town, USA. I don’t know what it is for you. Maybe one filled with farms out in Kentucky, or the rural streets in Montana. Maybe you have a zip code in Florida, or an address in Maine. Or maybe, like me, yours is the perfect small town in Connecticut. Wherever, in this vast world that we do we set up camp, learning to live and love, one thing remains true: Blessed are those who are fortunate enough that they have an entire town backing them up, waiting to hug them, waiting for them to come home.
Rest in paradise Mr. Fagan and Drew Mulligan (2-17-16) and all the other angels flying high from RHAM High School.
