Lisa Mayoh: Cheers to counting down the years

Toast the life you have – and if you get to count down the years, you’re well and truly one of the lucky ones, writes Lisa Mayoh.

School reunions can conjure up anxious feelings of self doubt. Picture: iStock

There’s nothing that can conjure up anxious feelings of self doubt quite like a school reunion. They can be the stuff of nightmares, right? Especially if you didn’t have a good school experience.

I loved school – always. But I hated my last reunion. It was six years ago, and I still remember every torturous minute.

My best friend in the whole wide world – and fellow alumni – had passed away from triple negative breast cancer six months before the 20-year shindig, and the organisers had asked me to say a speech in her honour.

It was awful, and I was in no state – but held it together to say what I had to say before collapsing in a metaphorical heap.

So my friends did what any good friends would – they scooped me and my grief up, took me home where we put on comfy tracksuits and drank wine and sat in quiet, sombre reflection, or laughed so hard through old stories we couldn’t even finish them, and then cried so hard we laughed again.

That was the reunion I needed – drinking wine and sitting in quiet, sombre reflection, or laughing so hard through old stories we couldn’t even finish them. Picture: iStock

That was the reunion I needed.

The actual reunion of 180 girls asking if I was OK? Torture.

So when my husband’s cohort recently marked their 30 years since leaving those high school gates – the same ones our youngest son will walk through for the first time next year – I was determined for him to have a good time.

Everyone was happy. There was no judgment, no “the grass is greener” or bad sports, bad attitudes. Picture: Supplied

He did and, as his best mate told me the next day, it was the best night of their lives. Why?

Everyone was happy. There was no judgment, no “the grass is greener” or bad sports, bad attitudes. No kids, no wife? No worries.

How much more secure do you feel in your own life, your own choices, how you’ve dealt with the cards you’ve been dealt … when you’re not worried about what other people think of you. Especially your mates.

Maybe you’ve just lost your job and that guy from your business class is the CEO you both swore you’d end up being. Or you played for the firsts in rugby and now can’t kick a ball to save your life. Or thought you’d have five kids, but instead are the best uncle to your nieces they could have ever hoped for. Maybe your parents are sick or you haven’t had a holiday in five years.

Everyone goes through stuff, and the lows are hard. Everyone’s story finishes chapters from where you thought it would – but maybe, just maybe, the best part is yet to come.

Having lost a friend at age 26, aren’t we lucky to get to celebrate a reunion? To even be in the room? What a gift.

So toast the life you have. And if you get to count down the years, you’re well and truly one of the lucky ones. And I’ll cheers to that.