“The only thing constant is change”.  This is something my mother used to say to me all the time.  But it’s only been since I reached my 40’s that I really understood what that meant.  Nothing, and I mean nothing stays the same.  Not your health, not your family, not your job, not your bank account, not even your own personality.

Some of these things are not surprising.  Like your job.  These days I think we all understand that jobs are not forever.  It is not like the old days, when our parents worked at the same company for 40 years, earning a beautiful gold watch for an extensive term of service.  Now we go to college, some of us for many years, and often don’t even work in the area we studied.  Changing jobs is pretty common – even changing career paths.  It seems much harder for our generation to find a place and stick with it.  Of course this is, in part, because we are all trying so hard to “find ourselves and ultimate happiness”.  Our parents surely never worried about that.  They worried about making ends meet.  Not about how happy they were doing it.

Other things are not surprising either.  Relationships are ever-changing.  We all continue to grow and change over time and experience.  Hopefully, whoever you are with will change along with you or at least hang in there with you.

Then there is death.  This is a change that is devastating.  Although we know in our heads that death will come to all of us, we just are not prepared for it when it happens.  Even when it is our parents.  I have found that this is one of the hardest things I have had to accept.  I’ve written about this before but I still cannot express enough how difficult this particular loss is.  I wonder how we ever recover.  Maybe we don’t.  Maybe we really do just carry on in a new world without that person.  Make no mistake, the death of a parent most definitely changes you and how you live your life.  I know this for sure.

I guess the change that is probably most surprising is changes with “families”.  I’m not talking about divorce here.  That is, unfortunately, not that unusual anymore.   But changes in relationships that you thought were more than they ended up being.  Of course this can include marriage but specifically I am thinking about friends and siblings.  Sometimes people can change in such a way that you absolutely do not see it coming.  You are completely taken off guard.  In these cases, I think this is particularly hard to just accept it and move on in your “new world”.

I once had a friend, a best friend actually, who I thought would be in my life forever.  We shared so much of ourselves and our separate families.  It was almost like we were related.  Maybe the family I chose.  Then something happened.  To this day, I still do not understand what it was.  We stopped communicating.  Our families stopped communicating.  The youngest of them really didn’t get it.  There have been times over the years when we have come together momentarily.  Times that I thought would bring us together again.  But it was really just momentary.   No matter how many years go by I will never understand it and have tried to teach myself to just let it go.  Most of the time I am ok.  But there are times when I just shake my head and am completely baffled.  I don’t think there is any blame to pin on anyone.  I think that things just changed.  Maybe that person changed right in front of me and I just didn’t see it happening.  Or maybe I changed and didn’t realize it.  Whatever the case I know that it changed.  Now that relationship is a memory for me.  A bittersweet memory.

I am not sure if I will ever know what lesson I am supposed to learn from that one.  But as time goes by, I am starting to reflect on  my Mom’s words and have come to this truth – there is no real lesson here – just change.  And it is probably wise to keep remembering that “the only thing constant is change”.