Wednesday, June 15, 1983
My dearest Martina,
I’m not sure if I am doing the right thing by telling you this now, or if I should tell you this at all. I wish I had the answers.
I can’t believe our three years at SMSH have come to an end. It seems as though only yesterday we were sophomores starting our high school years. I can close my eyes and see you exactly as you were that moment when you stepped into Mrs. Quincy’s third Period class – you looked so cute and sweet. Since that day in 1981 I have come to know you pretty well. You are not only a beautiful young woman, but you’re also kind, thoughtful and intelligent.
I know I have picked an awful time to tell you this, Marty, but I have been in love with you for a long time. Perhaps not in the beginning, for 3 years ago I was having a hard time coping with the end of a two-year relationship with someone who, unfortunately, was unfaithful. I was hurt and terribly insecure. In some ways I still am hurt and insecure. That having been said, however, the truth is that somewhere along the line, I fell in love with you.
I didn’t tell you before for various reasons. First, I suppose, is the fact that in 10th grade you were seeing someone else, and you seemed to be happy back then. I never expected that you and Kenny would go your separate ways, but then I thought my own relationship with my ex-girlfriend would last forever, too.
Life, I have learned, is full of surprises.
Martina, I’ve loved you not just because you are one of the prettiest women I’ve known. Your looks are, of course, part of what attracts me to you. But you are the one of the most generous and sweetest souls that I have met in my 18 years, and you are the one person who has the ability to brighten up a sour day. You have always managed to make me return a smile to someone else.
As I write this, I can hear the clock ticking. There isn’t much time left to our last day of high school. I wish I had enough time to tell you how I feel about you, but I haven’t the courage, the words, the space or the time to fully express my feelings. I looked at my watch just now – 1:39 p.m. to be precise. I wish for so many things, Marty. I hope you understand what I’m trying to tell you. I love you, my dear Marty, and I always will.
With all my love and affection,
Jim
– Alex Diaz-Granados, Reunion: A Story (Book 1 of the Reunion Duology
Every time I revisit the Reunion duology — especially the moments when Jim thinks about the letter — my mind drifts back to the third movement of Brahms’ Symphony No. 3. Not because it’s sad in the way Walton’s Death of Falstaff is sad, and not because it carries the gentle, nostalgic glow of Marty’s Theme (Forgotten Dreams by Leroy Anderson). It sits in a very particular emotional register between the two.
The poco allegretto is melancholy without despair, tender without sentimentality, and haunted without being tragic. That’s exactly the emotional temperature of Jim’s relationship to the letter — not devastation, not regret, but a quiet ache that never fully resolves. A feeling that lives in the space between longing and acceptance.
Walton’s Falstaff is too heavy for that.
Anderson’s Forgotten Dreams is too light.
Brahms, though — Brahms gets the middle space right.
Maybe that’s why this movement has stayed with me for so long. I first heard it in my Humanities course as a college freshman back in 1985, and it was one of those pieces that imprinted instantly. I didn’t have the language for it then, but I recognized the feeling: something wistful, suspended, unresolved, and beautiful because of its incompleteness.
Decades later, that’s the same emotional terrain Jim walks whenever he thinks about Marty’s letter. And so the poco allegretto has quietly become the soundtrack to those moments — not because I assigned it, but because it naturally settled there.
It’s the music of a memory that never stops breathing.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Leaves you longing for more.
Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2018
Verified Purchase
Reunion is a wonderful story that leaves you longing for just a little bit more. It’s a glimpse into the life of an extraordinary yet wholly relatable man; seeing his choices unravel, it leaves you to question everything you’ve done in your own life, and more importantly, what you’ve not done.
Excellent work by Mr. Diaz-Granados! – Becky Castellanos Castilla (WyLo and Me)
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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