No. Regrets.

Looking back to another time I realize just what I missed and, like most realizations of this sort, it comes around a bit late to do anything about it. Well, I can do half of it, I suppose and hope to know what the other half is doing in response to all of this. I have a pretty good idea but a rather late life lesson for me has been to learn to not to presume too much.

When Mary and I first met in 1986, we talked all the time. There was all manner of give and take about all manner of things. We did not confine ourselves to the usual talk about others. We talked about ideas and events around us. Some of our greatest times together were spent discussing books we had read and the ideas behind those books. We introduced one another to various authors and writings, ideas and thoughts. Before we were married, I told Mary, a cradle Catholic, that I (a cradle mongrel Protestant would be the best description) would never become a Catholic simply because she was one. Whether she knew it, it was her conversation that got me moving in the direction of the Church I was to enter at the Easter Vigil, 2001. But all that conversation slowed down, at least on my part, and eventually came to a grinding halt.

I do not know why this should have been the case. Another thing I don't understand: It has been just about a week and a half short of four years since she died and in all that time I have found more to say to her than I did in the four years previous to her death. Sometimes I think I hear answers. Not that I hear voices, but more like I have an ear in my mind that picks up on what she might be saying.

At one point I suppose I decided that I write better than I talk. This was long before I met Mary. In fact, it was probably somewhere along in high school when I first noticed this. Much of this may have had to do with home life where all was chaos and it was best to keep silent rather than get caught up in the ongoing fray. I learned early on that opening your mouth could put you directly in the line of fire. This is the training I received that put me on to the smart-ass remark, the witty rejoinder, the snappy comeback or, to put it another way, the secret of communicating while not appearing to do so. By turning everything into a joke, no one would take me seriously and yet my point would be made. Thus I became the class clown at school and at home. Realizing at one point that jokes were not always appropriate, I learned the rest of the time to keep my mouth shut and to lay low.

So, the major regret is that I missed out on all the wonderful things Mary could have and would have told me. Her mind was so alive and willing to share what she had in there and I was alive and willing to share jokes. She used to come home from a day of teaching elementary art saying, as she entered the door, "I need to talk to an adult right now." This was a defensive measure for her, I think, since she got to know that a joke would be coming unless it was forestalled. This is something for which I can never forgive myself. Yes, we did continue to have conversations that were joke-free, but they were too few and far between. I would have been a far richer and wiser man today had I bothered to converse with Mary on a regular basis. The fact that I did not is a crime against her and her memory.