[Header Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash]

Regret

More than a decade ago, close to one of the most celebrated birthdays, turning 50, I was ghosted.

Although I understand why, and even in some ways, accept that may have been the only option, since this was a person for whom I cared deeply, the experience was difficult—for many years.

Life altering.

But one thing just before that event has stayed with me; the person acknowledged we could no longer have a relationship but stressed they had no regrets.

In my last couple of days at 63—turning 64 Sunday—I know that I have made many mistakes but also that I have a life now that is often quite wonderful despite the inevitable tensions of living across seven decades.

Big picture, then, I do not regret the life that I have lived to get to the life I have.

Yes, I regret I forgot my father’s birthday (also my parents’ anniversary) just a year or so before he died. I realized that the next day and felt truly horrible—so lost in my own daily life, so unnecessarily lost in my daily life.

Yes, I regret that the night my mother died in Hospice, I was home, asleep; I slept through the call. I wasn’t there when she died.

But at nearly 64, I am aware that we mostly can only be the person we are capable of being at any moment in this life.

I simply don’t have time for regret—or blame.

I am fond of giving myself and others a break more often than not.

There may be some use in regret when we fall short of who we are and who we expect ourselves to be.

But most of the things of my life that others would judge me for, frankly, I don’t find to be anything done wrong; in fact, those are often those things that best reflect who I am and not who others expect me to be.

Melancholia

After I finished classes and lunch today, I had my usual nearly-hour drive home ahead of me. For an early birthday present to myself, I listened to The National’s First Two Pages of Frankenstein.

Lately, a couple of those songs have been on repeat in my mind—”Grease in Your Hair” and “Ice Machines.”

But the album is book-ended by two beautiful songs filled with melancholia—”Once Upon a Poolside” and “Send for Me.”

The first time I listened to “Send for Me,” I was in New Orleans the day after giving an invited presentation. F2PF was released that morning, so I sat in the hotel room after waking up early, my partner sleeping, to have a first listen.

When the final song played, I wept through it entirely. I was wrenched by the sweetness, the sadness, and the gentle humanity of the song.

Less than 48 hours from turning 64, I am filled with melancholia because aging is a heaviness.

I am fighting literal heaviness with my weight ticking up slightly year after year (and for someone who has lived as a serious cyclist weight has been an ever-present obsession for someone who looks mostly thin but persists in fretting over a bit of new weight here and there).

But aging is another heaviness.

The heaviness of awareness, the heaviness of knowledge.

I know a great deal, but most of all, I know what I don’t know.

The heaviness of the unknown, the heaviness of the unknowable.

Growing older may be as much bittersweet as melancholia because I am not sad. I am maybe as happy and content as ever.

It can be easier to come to peace with yourself and others with age.

And in the last days of my year 63, David Lynch died, just 5 days before his January birthday.

His creative works were incredibly important throughout my life so his death near my birthday feels heavier than it probably should.

As I told my students, I cried in public reading a story about Lynch requesting Cheetos in his dressing room in his last performance as an actor.

I have cried over the death of Kurt Vonnegut (when he died and when he died again in a biography).

I have cried over the death of George Carlin (when he died and at the end of a documentary on Carlin’s life).

There is something sweet and frail about someone of Lynch’s stature making a demure request for Cheetos.

And as sad as his death is, it has brought day after day of articles and videos sharing the quirky man Lynch was—a man at a sort of peace and self-awareness that makes me jealous, gives me hope.

As is usual, people I love and people who love me have asked what I want for my birthday, and I give my usual reply—nothing.

At least no gift, nothing special.

I want to wake up Sunday and continue with this life, this thing that is what it is and will be something I cannot predict.

I am better at this now, one advantage of aging, following Kurt Vonnegut’s advice:

So I hope that you will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

This is a simply thing, a true thing.

It is quite a nice thing to be here still.