Alternate Timelines of Regret

Is it harder to replace gaps in your future than gaps in your past?

My friend’s wife passed away from cancer recently. While I was expressing my condolences, I mentioned that I literally wouldn’t be able to understand what he’s going through, because, having never been married, I don’t know what it’s like to lose someone that you’ve intertwined with for that long, at that depth.

He’s in a stage of deep reflection about his life, and life in general, and everyone else’s life, which includes mine. So he gave me his thoughts on the regrets I have, such as the gaps in my life where maybe there should be a wife or kids.

In a way, his advice is predictable. There are truths that float around that can sound trite, except when said from someone living them. So it probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that he said I shouldn’t hold on to regrets. Isn’t that the kind of thing everyone says? Isn’t that just fodder for vacuous inspirational quotes set against pictures of sunsets and posted on Instagram?

Still, hearing it from him, where he’s looking ahead at a lot of years without the person he thought would be joining him on yet more adventures, his words had the weight of context necessary to make me seriously consider them.