I really, really wish I'd met my wife years before I did. I regret not finishing college. I regret no taking better paying jobs, but my experience and education didn't call for better paying. I also regret not staying with a job longer than I did, but then again...……..
My experience was much the same, only for different reasons. My best friends, Calvin, Robert, and Jerry, although we were all from different families, were first cousins. Calvin and I lived on the same road, separated only by cornfields, while Jerry was on a parallel road to the south, and Robert was on a parallel road to the north, all within a mile or so of one another. Calvin and I were born a few hours apart, but his birthday was a day before mine because he was born before midnight. There were a few others, including a couple of other cousins, who were with us sometimes, but it was usually just the four of us. We also hung out in school, from K-8th grade, although we had other friends there too. Except for Boy Scouts, which they didn't take part in, we were together all summer. That all changed when we started high school in another town. Although we went to the same school, we rarely saw one another anymore. I can't remember being in any of the same classes they were in, and the summer after 9th grade, I worked on the staff of a Boy Scout camp, and I don't know if Calvin, Robert, and Jerry hung out together or not. By 10th grade, cars opened up a whole other world. There was no falling out, and the separation wasn't even gradual. When we did see one another, we had nothing in common. I was in the drama club, while Calvin was in some agricultural group, Robert was doing sports, and Jerry's being a grade behind us made more of a difference in high school than it did in elementary school. Calvin joined the army after high school and was discharged in Germany, and his sister tells me he has returned to the United States only a couple of times. I see Robert and Jerry sometimes when I return to Wallace, as they are both still living there, but we don't have much in common. I think Jerry and I could still carry on a good conversation but we haven't had much of a chance.
Since my uncle's funeral.. to which my brother and I were not invited so we did not know of his death.. we cousins have had a sort of a reunion and the odd get together, but we are no where near as close as we were as kids. Three decades apart killed that. Besides they now have their own families and both live far away from us. Before my mother died I approached her about the estrangement of us cousins caused by her and her own brother. She was curt in her reply.. "dont want to talk about it".
Exactly the same for me, I loved my cousin so much - I wish I could find her, I've tried …… It was my childhood estrangement not my choice, but I do regret not trying to find her sooner
Not asking my father more questions about his family history while he was alive. I tried to encourage him to make an audio tape of his childhood memories once, but he never got around to it. I think he would have done it if I had asked specific questions, but I didn't know what questions to ask, until now. Does that make sense?
That makes total sense to me, @Nancy Hart , and I feel the same way about wishing I had asked my parents more. My mom and dad both told me a few stories about their childhood, but there are huge gaps that I wish I knew more about, especially, since we had the ancestry and 23&Me dna testing done. It turned out that people I thought were good friends of the family are actually relatives, and I just didn’t know that. It makes me happy to discover it, but I still wish that I had known about it sooner. Whatever my folks shared, they did, and I really never thought to ask more questions when they were still alive, and now, it is far too late. I started writing things down that I remembered from my childhood, and stories that my mom and dad told me, so hopefully, my kids wont have the same regrets about this as I had.
Similar thing about old pictures. I found a bunch of them, with people in them, and have no idea who they are.
My regret is this - I emailed my aunt and we made comments about my brothers new partner. The comments were justified. We assumed they were private and we were just airing our feelings with each other. We would never have said anything openly to this person as we would not have wanted to hurt my brother. However - the partner had helped my aunt set up her new iPad. We didn’t know that she had made it possible for her to access my aunts emails. She read what we said about her. She and my brother broke off all contact with us. I was never able to defend myself to my brother as he would only talk to us through her. My regret is that we said those things about her in what we assumed were private emails. However it’s clear she is a bad person. But I have lost my brother through this.
Like Frank said in his classic song "I Did it My Way", "Regrets: I've had a few, but too few to mention..." But I can't say I did it my way. I took the opportunities as they came, even when I made some serious mistakes. So to speak, it was more of "every which way the wind blew, I seemed to have rode the waves." I have to be thankful, however, because I believe that He was in the background taking care of me. Three times in my life, I almost bit the big one, but due to some unexpected things totally unexplained, I lived through them. I think it was all in the Lord's watch-care over me, and I still subscribe to that philosophy, because there is no other way to understand it. I'm no saint, but I always felt He was in my presence even as I look back, even though at the time I didn't know it.