A young man of 23 is walking around an old church at a sacred sight in England. With him walks a young woman of 22, dressed in a summer dress that goes well along with her long brown hair. She is beautiful in the summer sun and her glow of youth matches the suns rays in radiance and elegance. He likes to be with her and wants her for a girlfriend and perhaps, for a wife. His heart is racing, he can barely contain his emotions towards her but tried to keep himself cool and collected while in her presence, not wanting to give away how much love is in his heart for her and the moment.
They are travelling together on a day trip, looking at an ancient site and ancient church. Although it is a good for such a trip and the weather is quite good, they both realize that the real reason is to be doing something together, to be together in the moment. The moment is there, they are sitting in the church, the sun shines on the altar, the birds go suddenly silent and no sound is heard. Only the beating of their hearts can be heard, the love in their hearts. She turns to him and says: “This moment is memory for us” and I am creating a memory so strong that we have in in our hearts forever. She takes up a pebble stone from her pocket. She had picked up the stone outside before they entered the church. She looked at him directly and said: “Our memory is placed into this old stone pebble, where it will always remain”, and then she handed him the stone. He takes the stone into his hands and looks at it. It’s a rounded pebble, like millions of other around the area, but now it felt special. There was magic in it, there was a time lapse in it and the content of the stone was frozen in time. He kept the stone always and has it still. She did not become his girlfriend or wife. Life had other plans for both of them. They found other loves, they married other people and both had children with them. They remained friends for decades, meeting up to compare life and discussing life’s challenges. After over three decades their friendship eroded slowly and their meeting became a very seldom occasion, util they seemed like a formality and a superficial duty. For a couple of years the man thought about this relationship and questioned if it had a purpose anymore. It had become curtesy going through the motions for many years and he didn’t like it. The friendship had turned into a polite performance, not living, not dead, but still walking around. They met up every 18 months or so, if that. He thought about their friendship very hard and asked his inner voice what to do, and the voice answered back: “Let this go, let her go, this has become a pretense of a friendship and the both of you are playing a part of a friend, without being real friends anymore. Neither of you have the strength to close this friendship and remember it for what it once was“. The voice was right and he knew it. So he did the hard thing and drew himself away completely. He stopped contacting her and let the friendship end. So it ended. Such is life.
A.G. Munson
