Regret doesn’t shout. It whispers, creeping into the cracks of your soul when the world goes quiet. It’s the shadow that lingers after someone’s gone, the ghost of a chance you didn’t take. “If I had known John was going to die,” a voice trembles through the silence, “I would have made a lot more effort to try and get a better relationship with him.” Those words aren’t just a confession—they’re a wound, bleeding with the kind of pain that only comes when time runs out. We’ve all carried that weight, haven’t we? The moment you realize you could’ve loved harder, held tighter, spoken softer—yet didn’t.
John wasn’t a saint. He could cut with his words, sharp and unrelenting. “When he started slagging me off,” the voice admits, “I was not prepared to say ‘Well, you’re quite right,’ because I’m human.” God, that stings—the messy, beautiful truth of it. We’re not carved from marble, poised to forgive every slight with a serene smile. No, we’re flesh and blood, quick to bristle, slow to bend. When he fired those barbs, pride flared up like a shield, and instead of reaching across the divide, the gap widened. It’s what we do when we’re hurt: we build walls, not bridges. But oh, the cost of that stubbornness—how it haunts.
“My big regret was that I could have told John to listen and put my arms round him.” Can you feel the ache in that? It’s not just regret—it’s a yearning so deep it could shatter you. Picture it: a moment where words fail, where the air hums with tension, and instead of turning away, you step forward. Arms outstretched, heart exposed, saying without saying, *I’m here, I see you, let’s fix this*. But that moment never came. Instead, there’s just the echo of what might have been—a hug that never happened, a wound left unhealed, a goodbye that arrived too soon. The tears come now, don’t they? Because we’ve all lost someone—maybe not to death, but to distance, to silence—and wondered what one more embrace could’ve changed.
This isn’t just one story—it’s every story. It’s the parent you stopped calling, their voice now a fading memory. It’s the friend whose texts you ignored until the thread went cold. It’s the love you let slip away, thinking there’d be time to mend it later. We tell ourselves tomorrow’s promised, that we’ll get around to it—until the clock stops, and we’re left clutching shards of *if only*. “If I’d known” becomes a refrain, a hymn of sorrow sung too late.
John’s barbs weren’t the end—they were a plea, a crack in his armor begging for someone to push through. But we miss those signs, don’t we? We see the fight, not the fragility beneath it. And now, standing at the edge of that loss, the truth burns: it wasn’t about being right. It was about being there. “I could have told John to listen,” the voice sobs, “and put my arms round him.” That image—arms wrapping around a bristling soul—feels like a lifeline thrown into the void. Too late for John, maybe, but not for us. Not yet.
Because here’s the knife-twist of it all: we don’t know when the last chance comes. We stumble through life, bruised and bruising, assuming we’ve got forever to make it right. Until forever ends, and we’re on our knees, weeping for the words we swallowed, the touch we withheld. The pain of that regret—it’s a living thing, clawing at your chest, begging you to learn from it before another name joins the list of the lost.
So what do we do with this heartbreak? We can’t rewrite yesterday—those pages are ash. But today? Today’s still ours. Pick up the phone, trembling fingers and all, and call the one you’ve been meaning to reach. Let the argument die on your tongue and offer a hand instead. Wrap your arms around someone and hold them like it’s the last time—because one day, it will be. “I could have” is a dagger; “I will” is a balm.
John’s gone, and the silence he left is deafening. But you—you’re still here, heart beating, breath catching. Don’t let regret write your ending too. Tell them. Hold them. Love them. Now. Because the next chance might never come, and the weight of unspoken words is too heavy to bear alone.
