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I was hap­pily work­ing when my ran­dom MP3 play began strum­ming out the sadly melodic notes of Nickelback’s “Photograph.” It got me think­ing and oscil­lat­ing between joy, long­ing, sad­ness, fond­ness, reluc­tance, accep­tance, and nostalgia.

As the song is still in heavy rota­tion on top 40 radio sta­tions, I see plenty of peo­ple singing along in their cars, front yards, or even stand­ing on line at the bank. Most of those peo­ple smile, con­tent in the nature of the song as upbeat and warm­ing. It isn’t.

Listen to the lyrics. It’s a deeply emo­tional song about let­ting go of one’s past.

It’s hard to say it / time to say it / good-bye / good-bye

The song accounts the emo­tional ordeal, a moment in time, faced even­tu­ally by every­one who has left home. Distance can cool even the most pas­sion­ate rela­tion­ship, suck the com­fort from any inti­macy. Bestest friends who share each other’s deep­est secrets, can sud­denly real­ize that they haven’t shared secrets in many years, and that what they once knew, no longer has relevance.

Everyone faces good-byes, but for some­one like me, who has left home and gone wan­der­ing, there are fre­quently more good-byes than good-to-see-you-agains. Stay in your home town, and you stay and grow with the same peo­ple; good-byes are fewer and less fre­quent. Move away, how­ever, and keep on mov­ing to dif­fer­ent places, and the good-byes pile up.

That’s a tough song for me. More than a decade past my high school days, I’ve said good-bye to some old friends, but with oth­ers, I’m not ready to admit clo­sure just yet. Saying good-bye is a hard thing, and peo­ple don’t do it eas­ily. A small, naïve part of us always longs to return to the moments of the past and the peo­ple and places who made up those moments. That spark of inno­cence freezes those peo­ple and places in time, refus­ing to rec­og­nize that they, like we, have moved on and formed new moments. Like every­one else, I have that spark of naïveté fool­ing my heart into remem­ber­ing Brad, Jennifer, Jenny, Carla, Terri, Johnny, Chris B, Debra, Dawn, Naomi, Chellie, Odette, Elaine, Chuck, Jason, and a dozen oth­ers exactly as they were in high school, as if they did not exist but sus­pended inan­i­mately in my mem­ory, wait­ing for me to restore them to exactly the same state when I wish to relive our moments together. Of course, it’s not like that.

Carla got mar­ried, had chil­dren, and divorced. She was my first, you see, and there’s never a way to say good-bye to some­one like that, not all the way. I was not her first, so I am not as well cemented in her memory.

Odette dis­ap­peared into a bot­tle. After his father died, so did Johnny.

Elaine leaped into so many men’s beds that I even­tu­ally lost sight of her, hop­ping under the cov­ers on the horizon.

I saw Brad five years ago, just before I moved to Oregon. I tried to say good-bye to him then, but it didn’t seem as final as it should have.

I still keep in touch with Chris B once in a while, but we haven’t seen each other in six years.

I hear Debra, arguably the most level-headed of us, got mar­ried and lives in the same town somewhere–that town being Lakeland, Florida, where most of grad­u­ated from Lake Gibson High School.

Someone told me Chuck is doing time in Tallahassee for drug trafficking.

Jennifer, the first girl I ever kissed, is brought point­edly to mind by the lyrics of “Photograph.” (Coincidentally, Def Leppard’s “Photograph” also reminds me of her.) Last I heard, Jennifer was doing just fine, mar­ried, I think. She’s the kind of per­son that wouldn’t set­tle for good-enough, and I wish her the best of everything.

Jason and I, once best friends, had a falling out about his wife, whom I had been see­ing when he started up with her. They’re mar­ried now. Between the sit­u­a­tion back then, as well as all the imag­ined jus­ti­fi­ca­tions we’ve heaped upon the real­ity, we haven’t spo­ken in ten years.

Despite immo­lat­ing desire and a few attempts at cor­re­spon­dance, Terri I found out we didn’t really have much in com­mon once we put our clothes on.

Dawn and I were pen­pals for a while, never meet­ing in per­son, but get­ting pretty close through let­ters and draw­ings. She’s a famous painter now, with her own Website.

Naomi, aka Jasmine, and I were also pen­pals. With both of us mov­ing around, los­ing touch was eas­ier than it should have been. The same is true of pen­pals Chellie and Wendy, whom I also miss intensely. Chellie became a mom, but we lost touch when she fell in with some bad peo­ple. Wendy, whom I have met in per­son, got mar­ried and went back to school to become a doc­tor. I hope she fol­lowed through; she was a fan­tas­ti­cally com­pas­sion­ate nurse.

Other peo­ple I miss, not named here, were drawn away from me by time, our careers, fam­i­lies, or travel.

As the song goes, it’s time to say it. I rec­og­nize that. And, to some of the above, I have already said good-bye, at least within the con­fines of my heart, if not within their earshot. Others, though, still tug at my soul. I’m not quite ready to say good-bye to them yet, to squelch that lit­tle spark of naïveté that keeps them alive and frozen in my mem­o­ries. Foolish and naïve as it is, there’s a part of my being that believes I’ll find these peo­ple again, that they’ll greet me with hugs, kisses, and a mis­chie­vous plan to get us all into trouble–just like the old days.

If you hap­pen to be read­ing this, won­der­ing if the 7-year old pic­ture in the top-left cor­ner is a par­tic­u­lar per­son you once knew, let me make it easy. When I was in high school, and for a time after­ward, I went by my mid­dle name, Scott. Throughout school I also alter­nated my last name between my father’s, Burke, and step-father’s, Cardarelli (and occas­sion­ally hyphen­ated them both as Burke-Cardarelli). So, if you know a Scott Burke (or P. Scott Burke) or Scott Cardarelli who looks kind of like the pic­ture up there, then you’re prob­a­bly think­ing of me.

Drop me a line, let me know what you’re up to and how you’ve been. I’ll wel­come the con­tact, even if we’ve both already said good-bye to who we knew in the past.