You are speaking, I take it, in this example, of a decision with life altering and irretrievable consequences and not of a fork in the road. I wonder why you would want such a word at all -- 'example,' 'instantiation,' etc., when the power of the metaphor, if it is worth its salt, and if it has been so established as the archtypal, best, or canonical expression that it is itself the best term. In that case, the metaphor weakened, in my mind, by the construction of your sentence, which only references, but does not employ, it. That construction would, however, function very well, if it were used in elision: the notion of example being suggested, but not actually stated. As a "grammatical" question, however, I think the question is interesting whether there a specific term for this. And I have no idea the answer.