I had a very good online friend who I never met, but who meant a lot to me during a time in my life when I was facing a lot of decisions. I met him just before I was accepted to medical school, when I was making the difficult choice of taking a leap of faith and leaving my current career to start over in a new one.
One of the things that was a constant in our relationship was commenting on how life was a journey down a river. There are smooth passages, rough passages, and the occasional waterfall. We commented on how your river journey might meet someone else's and then later you split off again. That was our story... our journeys merged for a short time and then we split again. Unfortunately, his journey ended when he died just before I moved from Minnesota to go start my residency in Buffalo.
Now that my mother's journey has ended, and I am continuing on my journey without her, I am starting to consider changing direction or maybe taking a side channel to a completely different river. It's like I've come to a big confluence of rivers and suddenly there's a lot of decisions that have to be made. It's a scary time, but also an exciting time... white water rafting can be fun too...
1 comment:
I'm sorry your friend died before you had a chance to meet him in person. White water rafting can be fun unless you are in the middle of a thunder and lightening storm and you have to pull off to the side of the river and huddle under the tree with your young children....just saying :)
Seriously, that is a good river analogy. I'm going to remember it in the days ahead as I am sure you will be for whatever rivers or rafting you decide need to be navigated in your neck of the woods.
betty
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