“When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.”

– Maurice Maeterlinck

There is not a better reason than this one to live in love — to be love to all those you love every day.  There is not one of us who has not suffered some sort of loss.  When the tears come, what are the thoughts that accompany them?  Certainly, some are happy memories that we know we will only remember rather than making new ones with the person we love.  Many, however, are thoughts of regret and the recalling of times we can no longer redo or undo.

I had a poignant experience of this sort a number of years ago when a childhood friend of my two oldest boys stopped by to visit.  It had been twenty years since my son, Brett’s, death; and she had come to talk about how guilty she felt that she had not always been kind to him.  A particular incident had stayed with her — a day when I took all three kids to buy flip flops.  The ones featured that year had Disney characters, and the two older kids decided they wanted the ones with Mickey Mouse.  Brett, the younger brother and odd man out, immediately hopped on board.  By the time we had left K-Mart, however, Brett had chosen shoes with Donald Duck on them.  The older kids had manipulated the younger one in order to exclude him.  Twenty years later, his friend had shown up at my home to confess and to seek absolution.

I use this example of regrets because it is funny and trivial and the stuff that childhood is made of.  I assured my friend that the times she had been kind and loving and a good friend to Brett had far outweighed the flip flop day.  I reminded her of the way his eyes lit up when he saw her coming to play and the way that he loved her and his brother so fiercely that he would forgive anything they might have done to exclude him.

I have thought often of that day in the years that have passed, partly to remind myself that the things which no longer can be undone must be forgiven, and partly as a reminder to be love in all that I do.  When times of loss come, it is my fervent hope that they will be wrapped in love and not in regret.