I think there's a hierarchy of regret. I can have a physical regret in, "I regret having eaten the entire bag of chocolate-covered peanuts, " or "I regret not having more tonic for my gin." There's verbal regret that's closely linked to the "foot-in-mouth" disease like the time I asked a woman how old her baby granddaughter was when it was actually her daughter. I really regret telling the hair stylist, who always cut Mom's hair and fixed it for the viewing, that Mom was never really happy w/ her hair. I didn't mean that she didn't like how she cut her hair; it was always kind of a joke how she would fuss about her hair. I really regret having said that to the stylist b/c there's no way I can take back the words even though they didn't come out the way I wanted them to. There's regret for what we say and do, but there's an even worse regret for what we didn't say and do.
At Thanksgiving Mom mentioned that her doctor had suggested bringing Hospice in. I regret that I didn't pursue her feelings about that. My pathetic stare at her comment was meant to communicate that I wasn't ready to even start thinking about how she might be that near the end. I know she interpreted my dumb look as meaning I didn't think it was necessary. When we say something we regret, we can at least attempt to apologize provided it's heartfelt. But the regret of not saying anything is even worse.
Yea, yea, I know I'm supposed to live my life w/ no regrets, but if I don't acknowledge the regrets, how can I prevent them from happening again?
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