And, not unlike many of my peers, my memory of these events is, well, cloudy.

And then came Facebook.

Maybe Facebook  is the great flashback machine.

After all, I have connected with more people I have known from those wacky days in the last 6 months than in the last 25 years.

In conversation with many of them I am reminded of events that have long been tucked away, and forgotten, in the deepest recesses of the brain.

Just last week I got a call out of the blue from a ‘friend’ circa 1974-1978. We had not spoken, or communicated in any form, in 30 years.

As we stumbled down memory lane I had some genuine flashbacks of people, places and things way long forgotten.

Perhaps, as I approach 50 with full blown CRS (can’t remember shit), I should be glad that Facebook stands ready to deliver to my computer and telephone long forgotten events.

Maybe.

Now we have lost our second and last “child”, Annie. She died on October 11th.

Annie was the boss of the house. It was her world and my wife and I simply lived in it. She brought us 14 years and 4 months of pure happiness.

She was playful, loving, kind, gentle, fussy, messy, hysterical, neurotic, insecure, shy, possessive, wacky, fun and fabulous.

In the period of 5 days she went from happy and mobile (albeit crotchety) to paralyzed. She died at home on the bed she slept in for her entire life – our bed.

We miss her deeply and painfully each and every day.

There are ghosts of her that still inhabit our home.

The silence of no dogs in the house is deafening.

In both cases the opportunity to re-engage in each other’s lives was really great. It seems as if there is a wonderful ability to resume a conversation with old friends that know your past in a manner that feels like the conversation really had not taken a decade long hiatus.

Garrett was a great high school friend. We spend too much time ‘enjoying life’ in our teen years. The 70’s were a time when partying was a full contact sport and we played at the professional level! Now he is the CEO of a software company and is married with 5 kids. I am fortunate that Garret decided to track me down by calling my mother who gave him my number.

Joey was a friend I met in LA in 1979. Specifically, she worked in the same office building as me and I developed a crunch on her. Once she caught me peeking at her through the mail slot on her office door. While nothing ever developed romantically we became friends and had remained so for 20 years before we lost touch. Out of the blue I decided to call her business yesterday and I am sure glad I did.

The great thing about old friends is that they know things about you that you simply would not or could not feel comfortable disclosing to new friends. They have a unique take on the road map of your life because they have traveled the road such a long way with you.

I find that there is something uniquely special about cuing up a dormant relationship.