Regretfully Yours

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.” ~ Sydney Smith

On Friday April 16^th, 2010 at just after 10:30 in the morning I got an urgent call at work from my parents.  My Opa in Germany had passed away suddenly at the age of 84.  While I just stood there, the room spinning around me, sobs wracking my body and tears flowing in rivers down my face, the one word that surfaced through the undertow of emotion was “Regret.”

My Opa was born in Germany of German and Sicilian descent.  He had a strong European nose, thick wavy hair, and eyes that were bluer than any ocean could ever hope to be.  He lost his parents during World War II when an Allied bomb tore their town apart, and proceeded to raise his younger brother even though he was barely more than a boy himself.  He had been married to Maria for over 60 years, and raised three daughters that were the absolute apples of his eye.

My mom was the consummate daddy’s girl.  She’s the middle girl, and while her sisters are both fair-skinned with freckles and light hair, my mom hit the Sicilian genetic jackpot.  With her olive skin, dark hair and shimmering aqua eyes she bears a striking resemblance to my Opa’s mother.  Maybe that is what drew them together from the start, this resemblance to a mother long lost to the horrors of war, or perhaps it was their similar personalities…a mischievous sense of humor coupled with a stout stubbornness and a stalwart spirit that allowed little to get in the way of their goals.

My Opa was the kind of grandfather that every little girl dreams of having.  When my mom would tell my sister and I, “No – you may not eat an entire bag of Haribo before dinner,” a bag would always magically appear in our rooms by the time we skulked back down the hall in defeat.  When my grandparents stayed with us for an extended visit, my parents went out one night.  I told my Opa I thought we should make brownies; we didn’t have a mix and the man was born and bred on the metric system.  Despite all of this, he managed to help me figure out how to make them from scratch.  Never a pet-owner in his own right, he faithfully walked our cocker spaniel Duchess every day he stayed with us; rising out the crack of dawn to head out before the heat set in, which was rude awakening to our pampered pooch who preferred a snooze on the couch to a brisk walk in the park.  When I refused to dissect a worm in the seventh grade because I did not (nor do I still) believe that animals should be senselessly killed so pre-adolescent kids could hack them to bits and giggle with their friends in the process, he wrote me a letter that told me how proud he was of me for having the courage of my convictions.   When my other grandfather died while my mom and I were driving my Oma and Opa from Texas  to California, he held me in his strong arms in a motel room somewhere in Nevada as I sobbed, devastated not only by the loss of my grandfather, but at the realization that people I love will someday leave me.

I had not seen my Opa since I was 14 years old.  That is the last time I made the trip to Germany.  We kept in constant contact via letters, and I sent as many pictures of Nolan as I could.  When I was pregnant with Nolan I told my husband that the middle name for our unborn son or daughter would be my Opa’s surname.  I told my mom, but swore her to secrecy until after my son was born.  She said that when she told him he was overcome with emotion, relieved and ecstatic that his name wouldn’t die when he passed on.  It was a good choice for a middle name as my son possesses his Great-Opa’s sea blue eyes with the devilish glint.

I make no secret that I am afraid to fly.  I’ve done it many times; and the amount of stress, anxiety and quite frankly, agony, it brings into my life is not worth it most of the time.  The Seven Wonders of the World aren’t worth seeing if en route to bearing witness to all of their glory, you manage to crawl out of your skin in the process.

However, the biggest regret of my life will be that I never screwed my courage to the sticking post and boarded a flight to Germany to introduce my son to my Opa.  Oh the absolute joy Nolan would have brought a man whose medical ailments inhibited his ability to travel in his own right!  One can only imagine the shenanigans those two would have created together.  And I missed my chance, not only to make that magical introduction, but to ever hug him again, smell his aftershave, or enjoy our mutual love of ice cream together by sharing a cone on a bench in his tiny German town.

In addition to mourning the loss of an incredible man, I am also left mourning the chance to ever see him again, to ever introduce him to his namesake, to ever see my mom joyously collapse into the warm embrace of her beloved father.  I’m ashamed as much as I am heartbroken.  Please learn from my mistake.  Live your life with no regrets because at the end of this crazy ride, all those “should-a, would-a, could-a’s” will remain regretfully yours.