Class of 2020 - High School Graduations

Like a fellow parent Kwai Chang Caine perfectly expressed how many parents and graduate feel...”With all due respect, why can we not give our Class of 2020 graduates the graduation ceremony they deserved? It has been almost a year since these students have had their heartbreaking drive up ceremonies, and the painful memory is as raw today as when they first took place last year. Now with the pandemic starting to ease up and the school district is preparing to give the Class of 2021 an in-person graduation ceremony, I cannot help but wonder about my own daughter and the rest of her classmates, including graduates from other schools within our district, who did not experience a traditional graduation ceremony that we have all experienced and treasured for generations.
It is easy to say the members of the Class of 2020 graduates (and their families) and school officials had very little-to-no choice because of the pandemic, that we all need to put this experience behind us and move on with our lives: go to college or work, join the military, even get married and start a family. I have often wondered how these graduates' lives will be like someday by not only missing out on one of the most important events in their lives, but also not knowing what it felt like to be able to walk down the aisle in their caps and gowns to receive their diplomas from their school officials. What memories will they share with their own children someday?
Most of the Class of 2020 graduates, including their families, have probably concluded the events of 2020 as “water under the bridge” and have already moved on. The painful memories of their latter part of 2020 school school had already been buried in the recesses of their memory that they do not want to keep on reliving. But those rationales are more easily said than done, especially around this time of the year as current classes prepare for their own graduation ceremonies. And every time a graduation ceremony takes place in the future, it will be a stark reminder to all the members of our Class of 2020 (graduates, families, and friends) of their own losses.
I understand we cannot make up important events that the Class of 2020 graduates had missed out on in the latter half of their senior year, but we can still give them and their families the honor of this once-in-a-lifetime ceremony that they had waited for most of their lives. If we do not make up these graduation ceremonies to help put closures in this dark chapter of our lives, then we would have committed one of the greatest errors in this lifetime that will haunt our conscience for as long as we live. That is, we had the opportunity to correct the misfortunes that befell all of us but we had decided to ignore or leave them to chance, and now they will forever become a part of our legacies.”
Sincerely,
A Parent of the Class of 2020 graduate