“Each one of us will face an unexpected person who appears in our lives — and they’ll need YOU…”

Two experiences — one last summer in Millcreek Canyon and one many years ago in Europe — impart a powerful lesson: We are where we’re meant to be.

My friend, Martha, and I go to Millcreek Canyon during the summer. We pack a lunch, take comfortable camp chairs, dip our feet into the stream, eat — and talk for hours. We’ve forgotten how many years we’ve done this but never a summer passes that we don’t have this little retreat to ourselves.

Last summer as we approached our favorite site, we found a woman sitting there in her own camp chair. We walked on across a bridge and found another space with the briskly flowing creek singing to us, and we began our conversation in the easy, non-stop way of friends who always have too much to say. After an hour, we heard a call from the woman in the camp chair across the creek. With the sound of the creek, we had to strain to hear her — but then her voice was clear. She formed her hands around her mouth in megaphone style and yelled, “Can I come and talk with you? I’m so lonely.” My friend and I looked at each other and immediately replied, “Yes!”

A beautiful woman joined us. With all the right hiking gear, clothing, and chair, she presented herself as someone who knew what good hiking was about. But her face was covered in tears and she continually wiped her hands over her face, pushing her hair back, and adjusting her sunglasses. Through tears and gasping breathing she unfolded her story of failed relationships, estranged children, substance abuse, negative middle school influence, and inability to connect with those she thought she loved. My friend and I listened and reflected on what the woman said. She continued her description of her failed life. I asked her, “What do you really want?” She looked astonished and said, “I don’t know. No one has ever asked me that before.” She paused and said again very slowly, “I don’t know. No one’s ever asked me that before.”

After 40 minutes, the woman suddenly said, “Boy, I feel so much better. I should pay each of you a thousand dollars. You women are great.” She began to laugh, packed up her chair and backpack, hugged us, and thanked us again. At this woman’s departure my friend and I just looked at each other, trying to mentally piece this experience together.

An experience from my early 20s came to my mind. I was teaching overseas and my mother came to visit me during spring break. On our last evening together in Amsterdam, we were finishing dinner at the Krasnapolsky Hotel dining room. An American woman came to our table and asked if she could join us. She told about her father, who’d died that day. He’d wanted to travel from the states to his homeland and she made that possible for him and accompanied him on the trip. Suddenly on this day, he collapsed and died. The woman said she’d received excellent and efficient help in arranging for the transport of her father’s body to the states. She said everyone had been so helpful. But, she said, she needed someone to talk to, to express her real feelings. We seemed to be the right people to ask.

My mother said then and many times over the next years, “We are where we’re meant to be.” How true it was in Amsterdam and how true it was at Millcreek Canyon and many times in between. I thought of all of us as we work in our individual capacity at Intermountain. Each one of us will face the unexpected person who appears in our lives. The person may be your patient, a colleague, a member of your family, or someone you don’t know, but they’ll need YOU. Esther in the Old Testament expressed the idea with a memorable question: “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” That time, I predict, won’t be a phone call, a text, an email, or a Skype conversation, but a face-to-face encounter that will make you realize: You are where you’re meant to be.

Rosemary’s first career of 40 years focused on educating children in Michigan, North Africa,
Guam and Utah where she served as teacher, counselor and middle school principal. She is a
board-certified chaplain and now works with the Palliative Care team at Intermountain Medical
center. Her first book, The Gift Within, is scheduled for publication in fall of 2020. She is a proud
wife, mother, grandmother and devoted friend. Her recent pursuits are art, writing, poetry,
reading, walking, and being.

If you have an essay on aging you'd like to share with others on the blog, click here for submission info. Since I also teach “Writing Through Grief” and “Writing as a Tool to Cope with Anxiety,” if you have an essay related to these topics that you’d like to share, I’d love to read it!