It's rather common to hear people speak of like as if it were a path.  It's a tempting metaphor really.  Rocky, narrow, dark, winding and sometimes overgrown with trees, our lives indeed seems that way sometimes.  And sometimes we meet somebody on the path who walks with us for a while.  And sometimes we come to a crossroads, and say to that person, "I shall go this way," and they say to us, "I shall go this other way," and before we know it we've said goodbye.  Sometimes our paths recross, but sometimes they don't and the parting of ways was simply a parting.

There are others, perhaps of a more fatalstic mindset, who think of life as a stream, down which we are carried along until we are lost in the ocean.  Perhaps this is also true, and we never really do more than wave at one another as we pass. 

But in my experience, our experience in this life is more like a book.  The people we meet in chapter one may well die by the time the last page is turned, or may in fact to turn out not to have been important to the story at all.  But unlike a path or a stream, a book is not over when you reach the end.  The characters never leave.  They stay exactly in place, and no matter how many times you finish Romeo and Juliet, he is still at this very moment climbing that wall, and she is still as we speak testifying to the moon.  Penelope still unweaves her tapestry every night, and that ragtag group of travelers never does reach Canterbury.  We never really say goodbye to Pip, or Catherine, or Sancho.  And even if we wanted to, we couldn't say goodbye to those we've loved, laughed and cried with in our lives.  Once we've lived something, we can't unlive it, no more than we can unwrite something. 

Which is a comfort in a way.  Or at least, it should be.