Because I am facing a move back to my "home", I have been reflecting on who I have known since I left. I have met so many amazing people in all the places I have lived. Some of them may have been just Average Joes, but they have touched my life and left an impression.
Before we moved from Nashville, I had a chat with my friend Alisa. I told her that I stunk at keeping in touch with people, and that although I may love and think about someone often, I may not call or write or email. I knew leaving Nashville that there were people I was leaving that likely I will never meet again in my life. She reminded me that eternity is for that very thing. She imagines us finally running into each other in the after-life and saying "So what did you do in your life after I last saw you?" That thought brought me so much comfort. It made me see that I don't only have X amount of years of my life to be sure I stayed connected with and sufficiently thanked and loved the people who have come in and out of my life.
So in continuing that eternal thinking, irrespective of time and place, I tried to imagine who, of all the people I know, would be good friends with whom, if given the chance. For instance, I know that my friend Sue (of smoking fame) would probably get along famously with my friend Jenn, who I met in Utah but got to love in Seattle. Sue likely will never meet Jenn, but if she did.... Would they be instant buddies? Are they as much alike or different as I think--enough to constitute an immediate friendship? Hmmmm.....
I think the YW Pres in my ward in Nashville is so much like the friend we spent our first Christmas Eve with in Steilacoom. I so much want to have my Gal Pal in Portland meet my college friend who lives in North Carolina.
And what of those brief acquaintences I had--people who I may not have "bonded" with, but who floated in and out of my life leaving memories in my brain? Did Vickie and her son Travis ever really kick her life-long boyfriend out for good? Did Rachel become that accomplished Opera singer after all? Where is the darling Scottish lady who was in our car when we took a wrong turn and ended up in Birmingham on our way to Atlanta? What happened to Emily after her husband graduated from Vanderbilt--is he a doctor in Utah now? Does Vicky (different Vicky) still have friends intermittently living in her house, and does she still drink White Russians and collect cats? Did the photographer whose "Lamp post in Prague" hangs in my TV room ever get pregnant? What did my "poligamy-sister" name her last child? Does "Big Sal" still have the skirt I sloppily sewed on my first attempt at making clothes? Does my beautiful Hawaiian friend still have my son's Batman costume? Who borrowed my first copy of Babette's Feast? Who has the Vampire cape I sewed?
Tune in to the next life for the answers to these and other probing questions.
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