By Butch Freedman
I’m very happy with the life I now have — a wonderful partner, a great place to live, relatively good health for a guy my age. But, as grateful for all that as I am, I still, in my later years, can’t avoid looking back at my life and feeling some regrets. Who doesn’t? I count as regrets only those things that I can no longer remedy, which is, of course, most all of them. There were a number of experiences that didn’t turn out the way I hoped they would, but eventually led to a better long-term outcome. I imagine we all have those: the relationship that broke your heart, but then allowed you to form one that was better, stronger, and more real. Or the job that you lost, only to find one that became your life’s work. Even that ill-advised marriage but one that also produced two incredible children. (Yeah, I’m getting personal on that one.) Those scenarios can’t be counted as regretful. Just a turn on the path. “Way leads on to way” as Robert Frost wrote in “The Road Not Taken.”
So here are some of my only true regrets. First among them is that I never took the time to find out very much about my grandparents’ lives — all four of them. Maybe I was too young to understand that I only had a limited time to hear their stories. But that’s not much of an excuse. I was in my early twenties when the last of them passed away. All four were immigrants from Eastern Europe — Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Russia (now Ukraine.) I had only a vague sense of the travails they went through to get to this country and figure out a way to thrive and raise families. So many good stories I missed, so much history un-recorded. Some of my cousins have done genealogical research and come up with lists of names and dates. That helps, but those aren’t what I missed; those dates don’t include my regrets about not sitting in their presence and listening to tales of their lives. Their blood flows through my veins still, and yet I don’t know the paths that blood has traveled. I did get to spend a few very meaningful afternoons with my maternal grandfather, Joseph Goldberg — Grandpop. He had migrated from Russia in the early 1900’s and went to college in Philadelphia to earn a degree as a pharmacist. He was also a poet, and a socialist, and a reader of ponderous tomes, some of which he gifted to me. One was titled, “Confessions of an English Opium Eater.” Grandpop knew how to get my attention. At his funeral, I bravely addressed the mourners and read some of his revolutionary poetry, much to the dismay and confusion of the mourners. I think he would have appreciated it. At least I had that. I have no such recollections of my other grandparents.
I have somewhat similar regrets about my relationships with my own parents. Maybe more so. My father was a mostly silent parent, allowing my mother to take on most of the burden of raising and communicating with the three children. I always longed for a closer relationship with Dad, to hear his stories, but eventually came to realize that those stories weren’t available to me. Yes, we went to the occasional sporting event together, and I loved that, but we didn’t talk very much—or at all, except to cheer for the Penn football team. In later years, that yearning for connection turned to resentment and anger. And Dad mostly was lost to me. Big-time regret there. It still hurts.
Shall I go on with this, I ask myself. What use is it? Maybe I should stick with the Sinatra reference in the above title. “Regrets I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention.” Why bother now when there’s nothing that can be done. Dad passed away 25 years ago. But I still want to make my peace with his memory — our memory. I want to honor him in my own mind, before I leave. But that’s a story for another day. I’m still working on it.
All the other regrets I have, at least those I can recall, seem mostly minor now or inconsequential in the big picture. Yes, I moved to Seattle for an ill-advised relationship, and in the process gave up a job I loved and sold a beach house for an incredibly low price, because, what the hell, I was sure it was the right thing to do at the time, and was pretty damn rocked when only two months later realized I had made a dramatic mistake. But I recovered, and found some years later a much, much stronger relationship and bought an even better beach house where I still live quite happily with that wonderful woman who is my wife now of 23 years.
So, there you go. All you can do is live your life, I tell myself, and take the road that seems correct at the time. But, if you’re still able, do make sure you listen to those stories from your parents and grandparents. Then write them down and pass them on.
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