Promised Walks Never Taken

 Promised Walks Never Taken

In the face of an overwhelming loss like the death of a life partner of many years, grief can turn every small regret into a burden difficult to bear. You regret every missed opportunity and every occasion when you took your beloved for granted.

A photograph accidentally tucked into a box of bills can derail a search for a document with a long period of just sitting and looking at a picture of a place you didn’t actually enjoy visiting.

Coming across a garment that missed its date with the donation box, you may clutch it to you as something precious - before you put it into a bag for the next trip to the thrift shop.

A reference to a place or a time of year can squeeze your heart time after time, until you feel like you’re the recurring character in Abbott and Costello films who would fly into a rage at the mention of “Niagara Falls”.

A breeze across your face can take you back to a windy afternoon which was entirely ordinary, except for whom you were with.

“Our song” can turn out to be the entire catalog of a musician or even an entire genre of music.

Even the sight of the door can arouse sorrow for promised walks never taken.

You can’t stop remembering, though, and you wouldn’t want to.

In the end, all you can do is appreciate the memory of what you once had, and try to take solace from it, and hope that you can build a life after bereavement that is something more than a compendium of regrets and backward glances. 

https://africa.si.edu/2014/05/when-great-trees-fall%E2%80%A8%E2%80%A8-by-maya-angelou/

One of the members of my group said that she'd heard this poem read four times in different places in honor of Justice Ginsburg, but it made me think, inescapably, of my own personal loss.

Kathe, I love you. I will never stop loving you.

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "The only way to avoid the pain of loss is never to have had anything to lose."