Since Mum’s death in November, this has been a rough patch with lots of people dying and I’ve been processing that a lot.
Mum, as I said repeatedly, gave us plenty of warning that she wasn’t going to last forever. She’d had her first heart attack late 2000 and first stroke early 2001, so we knew that we were really on “golden time” with her for all the years after. And they were really great years!
After I got the news of Mum’s passing, there was some time before my sister decided that she really wanted me to fly over that very day so that I could be with her and my older brother, Alec (who had planned on spending Thanksgiving with Mum – I was scheduled to come over the week before Christmas) – and then there was the very, very long flight from LAX to London and I had a lot of time just by myself to think of Mum and her life.
And very early on in that, these words came to my mind: “No regrets.”
Maybe it was me, maybe not. It didn’t matter because it was so totally true.
Mum had an awesome life. There was nothing to regret that she passed at that time and, at least for myself, the words “No regrets” sound very much like something she would have said to me.