This post is somewhat less 'connected' to me, and hence less 'important' (very heavy finger quotes there), but it's still something that made me think. I just got a phone call from my dad: it turns out my mom's brother's wife (so my uncle's) suddenly passed away on Monday. Now, she wasn't 'young', and I didn't know her and her husband as well as my other uncles, on my dad's side of the family, as my uncle wasn't the most social person, but it was still a 40 year marriage ending, a life companion lost. This is enough to get my deepest sympathies, but there's another factor that makes me post, something I've been thinking on these last hours.
See, when I inquired on cause of death, there has yet to be an answer. But while inquiring, my dad informed me that apparently, my aunt had an incident in her youth that left her utterly terrified of doctors, and hence she refused to ever see a doctor, or a dentist, or any medical professional, for the rest of her life. This strangely mirrors an acquaintance-friend my dad had years ago, named Tex, who refused to see a doctor about his diabetes because his brother had lost a foot to the disease, and Tex didn't want to go into the doctor's and be told he would also have to have something amputated. So he neglected medical care for his disease, and eventually he suffered complications that, instead of costing him a foot, cost him his life. As someone who has their own degrees of paranoia (though mine run in the hypochondriac-esque other direction), I can understand how these concerns can override logic, but that's not the point of my post.
What I've been thinking about is how my uncle spent 40 years with this woman, likely knew about her issue, and apparently had no way to help her with it. What do you do when you get older and medical issues become a deeper concern, yet you're irrationally terrified of seeing any kind of doctor? Do you force her? Knock her out and strap her to a bed in a hospital? How could you possibly inflict that kind of pain and suffering on someone you love? And, if something like this happens...how can you not think that you should have done it anyway?
Many of our characters have reality-based issues, but at the same time, they all have fantastic circumstances tied to them that requires suspension of disbelief. This is the kind of regret that's as real, and as dark, as it gets. There's no real answer, and it rides on the pain of grief like a parasite. It's just something to think about, I guess, for the future. The reality of some regrets.
Pretty much everyone has regrets one way or another. The important thing in life is not to dwell too much on what you can't change and what was beyond your control. I feel it's important to focus on what you did right, and to learn from mistakes but not let them get you down. Funnily enough, Sarah had to learn a similar lesson last year (at least twice).
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