And returning home to pick up the thread of my life, I found not much happened during our absence until I skipped to the obituary notices. For all of us, a death in the family - whether unexpected or long awaited - is a watershed event. Lives are altered forever as a result of the death of a loved one, regardless of the age of the person who passed away.

So, I was more than a little surprised to read of the death at age 37 of Bill Dickinson of Whately, whom I came to know and like because of his roofing skill. I recall one bitterly cold winter when an ice dam built up on the roof above one of our bedrooms at our house on North Main Street, causing major water damage. Bill scaled the icy roof in sub-zero temperatures and broke up the compacted ice, which ended the serious leak. What a fine man he was, a pleasure to meet on the street or in the post office, invariably cheerful, expert at his profession, and much too young to leave us.

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Stanley Osowski was only 58 when he died, and I stopped to read his obituary because he too had come to my aid when I needed some speedy financial help many years ago. At that time, he was working for the Nonotuck Savings Bank before it was taken over by the Springfield Institution for Savings, and then merged with some bank whose name means nothing to anyone. Rearranging his schedule on short notice and letting me into the bank after normal hours, Stan deftly handled all the paperwork and expedited a short-term loan with amazing dispatch. That was during an era when hometown banking had meaning, when customers were friends and vice versa. Try finding that environment at the Fleece Bank.

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I did not know Ronald Macdonald, although I may have meet him a couple of times, but Ann did and she along with all his friends and colleauges in the Smith College community was very upset to learn of his death at age 58. His illness was short in duration, but hard to fathom or accept. I regarded Marian, his wife, as a good friend because our long-standing mutual interests in bookish matters. Her daughter, Rachel Simpson, worked at the Gazette as I had, and Rachel and our son Christopher were classmates at Northampton High School. They attended their 20th class reunion just last fall.

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A year younger than me at 64, Steffen Plehn, was a Worthington selectman who had moved to this area a few short years ago after a distinguished career in government and higher education. It was he who first got in touch with me to remind that we had been college classmates although we had never known each other. It was news to me, but I was glad he sought me out. He would come into the bookstore from time to time and it was clear that here was someone with a lively mind and boundless energy, something his neighbors and friends in Worthington quickly came to appreciate. He suggested he and our wives get together for dinner some time, which seemed like an excellent idea. We never did, and I’m sorry for that.

John Szymkowicz of Hadley was 72 at the time of his death and I recall the time he did some wallpapering for us some 25 years ago. We went away for a few days to get out from under foot, and left our youngest son, Mark, at home and in charge. Returning home, we found that John and Mark has become good buddies and had "bonded," as they say, during the time he and Mark spent together. Later, whenever Ann would bump into John on the Smith campus he’d immediately inquire after Mark. And Mark, told the other day of John’s passing, recalled him instantly and with fondness.

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Such are the contacts, not of great importance or often only superficial, that small-town communities provide and that we take for granted all the time. We only come to value such relationships when we have gone away and come back home, thinking everything is the same.

In retrospect, it is not true that nothing happened during the two weeks we were away. It’s just that what happened involved other people, some of whom I knew and many of whom I did not know.

Everything is not the same - friends and acquaintances are absent forever and all of us are poorer for it.