Absence

April 26th, 2026

A young man, who is a close relative, cut off all contact with me about ten months ago. I haven’t I heard anything at all from him since he broke the connection with me. I don’t expect to hear from him anytime soon, and maybe that is for the best. As I think back on our last conversation, this separation was probably necessary and inevitable.

I spoke to a neighbor about this young man, and he told me about his son, who had left without a word one day and never communicated with his parents for ten years. It was not clear to me from what my neighbor said if he and his son ever reconciled. He did tell me that his son died.

The discussion with my neighbor made me think about the long estrangement I had with my own family. I left home at the age of eighteen to go to school at West Point and pursue a career in the U.S. Army. I was gone for twelve years. I visited my family when I could, but that was at most maybe twice a year. When I was stationed in West Germany, I think I went a couple years without seeing them at all. We stayed in contact, although at that time it was mostly through snail mail. I believe I was on good terms with my family, but we were far apart and our lives were on very different trajectories. We missed big chunks of each other’s lives. I wasn’t there for my dad’s first heart attack. He wasn’t in Germany for my wedding. During those years, I became an Army officer and a helicopter pilot. I lived all over the United States and spent three years in Europe. I married a German woman and eventually left the military to work in the trucking industry. When I finally returned to my hometown, I was thirty years old with a wife and a baby boy. I also arrived with some trauma and a drinking problem. I was not my parents’ little boy anymore.

Reestablishing family relationships proved to be difficult. I wasn’t ready for all the changes in my family of origin. They definitely weren’t ready for me. At the risk of stating the obvious, things were not the same as before I left. I was a different man, and they were also different from what I remembered. My father and I had a number of bitter arguments, and I am convinced that some of the strife was due to the fact that we were fighting with someone who no longer existed. I couldn’t recognize that the person yelling at me was a stranger to me, and that person couldn’t understand it either.

In Buddhism there is the idea that all aspects of who we are as individuals are transitory. The physical changes in our bodies as time passes are obvious, but people change internally too. We evolve emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Fifty years ago, I went to West Point, and I am not much like that scared and idealistic young man anymore. The Buddhists talk about the Five Skandhas, the shifting sands of our being. They are defined as follows:

“The five skandhas are essentially a method for understanding that every aspect of our lives is a collection of constantly changing experiences. There is no one aspect that is truly solid, permanent or unique. Everything is in flux. Everything is dependent upon multiple causes and conditions.” from the Encyclopedia of Buddhism.

Even when living with somebody every day, there are those changes. Sometimes, they sneak up on a person. Our grandson, Asher, is five years old, and he seems to be with me almost constantly. Even so, some mornings I wake and look at him and wonder who this little man is. He literally grows up overnight. He changes as I gaze at him sleeping in bed. His skandhas are very active.

I may meet my young man again, or maybe I might not. If I do see him again, I will be meeting him again for the very first time, because he will be a different person, and so will I.