Go as a River

by Shelley Read

He would teach me how true a life emptied of all but its essentials could feel and that, when you got down to it, not much mattered outside the determination to go on living.

and what I would tell my son if I was ever fortunate enough to know him: that I had lived my life willing to face what came to me, and that I’d always tried to do the next right thing. I would explain that what I had learned most about becoming is that it takes time. I would say I had tried, as Wil taught me, to go as a river, but it had taken me a long while to understand what that meant. Flowing forward against obstacle was not my whole story.