Pulled back in time by a call for prayers

He may have signed my yearbook. I may have signed his. We may have hugged on graduation day. Didn’t everyone hug then, promising to remember?

A boy from high school. His name in an e-mail, which made me stop and stare because I hadn’t thought of this boy since the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth wore habits and I wore an ugly blue plaid uniform and Tony Bennett was on the radio some mornings when my mother drove me to school, singing a song I was too young to believe, but loved anyway: “Once upon a time, the world was sweeter than we knew.’’

A boy from high school e-mails and in the subject line are words that never mean good news: “Need prayers.’’

And like the penny Christopher Reeve pulled from his jacket in “Somewhere in Time,’’ this pulled me out of now back to a time when this boy from high school was what all of us were - kids, still, whose biggest worry was that we were shy or gawky or didn’t fit in or didn’t have the right clothes or couldn’t get algebra no matter how hard we tried. Our illnesses, our struggles, our wars, our failures, our disappointments, and our deaths were years ahead.

Fresh-faced. That’s how I see this boy from high school. Fresh-faced and smiling.

You wonder why these four years stand out and not four others? Not the first four years of a job. Not the first four years of marriage. Or living in a new house. Or being a parent for the first time.

We were together all the time. At school every day; at dances, boys huddled on one side of the room, girls clustered on the other; at first Friday Masses; at lunch; at football and basketball games.

We had the same experiences. We read the same books, watched the same movies, shouted the same cheers, studied the same subjects, learned the same lessons, recited the same sins in confession, knew the same people, even wore the same uniform.

The day President Kennedy died, every one of us heard the news at the same time on the school public address system.

Unless you’re in a convent or the military, this does not happen again.

A boy from high school writes and says to his classmates - not right away. He leads up to it - that he has ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, a condition that paralyzes the body. And that his wife has multiple sclerosis, which also paralyzes. And that he is her caretaker. And that they both use canes.

“We’re not seeking anyone’s sympathy. However, we’ll gladly accept prayers from everyone,’’ he says. “My attitude is that the Good Lord has given me 64 wonderful years so far. His will be done.’’

And because for four years we were connected, we are connected still.

And my heart aches. The hearts of all his classmates ache.

Our graduation song, which we sang with gusto and grins, so young it was just music, was “Climb Every Mountain.’’

We never imagined the mountains.

A boy from high school. I don’t know where he lives. I don’t know what he has done for the last 47 years. I don’t know about his wife or his children. Or if he is a grandfather.

But I know this.

Once upon a time, he sat behind me or in front of me. We learned the same lessons. We prayed the same prayers.

This is a huge mountain he has to climb. But this boy from high school?

He won’t have to climb it alone.

Beverly Beckham can be reached at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .