Changed the sheets, made the bed, took a long walk, and visited my wife’s grave. Yesterday was a good day because I also had a revelation. It always helps when I have one, because it calms the emotional waters. The revelation came last night, at the end of the day, as I was thinking back to the darker night when I sat with my wife as she lay dying. I was wondering if I missed something, if there was anything I could have done to change the outcome. Was the fault somehow mine?

It was a little late for that sort of rumination, but therein lies the revelation. I’ve left things and people and places before, over the course of my longish life, and always there was the bittersweet mulling of the past as I remembered what I was leaving and maybe even worried about how I left. Did I forget something? Was I offensive beyond repair? Would I even be back? And always the plane or the train or the car would keep moving, taking me further away until at last I was in a new place, and the world would shift. This is like that. Okay. Now what? Nothing. It just is. I’m in the car, moving away, on a journey of indeterminate length.

I guess one of the benefits of living three quarters of a century is the time it allows for the accumulation of memories, both good and bad. On the bad memory scale this is a big one. So, it warrants me thinking about it, but now it feels a bit more normal, because to a lesser degree, I’ve done it before. Pined for something lost. Yearned for something missed. Wanted desperately to go back. All the while knowing, however, that what I had is not what I have or what I might have, and that where I’m going is only what I might make of it when I get there.

  John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale