All of us carry regrets. Conversations, events and actions we chose poorly. Things we wish we hadn’t said. Acting in anger rather than love. Sometimes we should have been angrier. Hindsight is 20:20 and regret is 24/7. So we wish to try one last time.
But there is no regret like things left unsaid to a lost loved one. Promises of better times and professions of love are all left abandoned. For they can no longer hear them. We wish for hope, for one final conversation.
It does not need to be long. Just long enough. Long enough to tell them how you feel. Long enough to empty your heart.
People often say that losing someone is like losing a piece of yourself. Like having a chunk of your heart ripped away, but I disagree. My heart has never been so full. And it aches. It aches to release the pain. It aches with the unsaid. “I’m sorry, I love you, I can fix it. Please. Don’t. Go.” But they do. They must go. For it is not for us to decide when nor how nor why.
We carry their memories so they live on with us. And this is why we mustn’t mourn the lost time but focus on the moments of happiness we shared. While we remember them, they stand with us. They live on in our memories and in our memories the world is a happier joyous place.
It is through our memories of them that the final moments we seek can be achieved. In our memories they hear and understand every thought and idea. While a vision appearing before us is impossible, we can whisper and believe, through faith or hope, that we have been heard.
We are each a patchwork of our experiences, messily sewn together. We are not perfect but each element of us is beautiful. We carry the memories of those who helped to make us and they remain because they mattered. Even as time goes on and details wane, we never forget how we felt in that moment. How they made us feel. Love cannot be forgotten, and we remember.
While we desperately yearn to see them one last time. To release every thought we have ever buried or maybe just to look at them. Perhaps a final conversation is not what we truly need? While the suffering hurts and torments like it will never end, maybe it is an okay thing to lose. For to lose is to have once had. And the loss of a piece of ourselves reminds us how important the rest of our pieces are. Perhaps if we simply tell our dearest how we truly feel now there will be no regret.
People are not mindreaders, we must tell to show. Even through loss our loved ones teach us so much, and help us become better people.
So do not wait. Do not wish for one last time.
