Missed Opportunity

I returned to therapy, after a few years off, in 2011.

I was struggling with some difficult relationships in my life, as well as trying to make peace with the deaths of two loved ones, while also weighing the pros and cons of a big decision for our family.

Those were the objectives I laid out at our first session.

I wanted my new therapist to help me address those three issues.

And she did.

After many meetings, discussing my feelings and working through how to cope with all of the things that were weighing me down, my therapist suggested a common thread,

Missed Opportunity.

My difficult relationships were missed opportunities for close, deeper and more genuine connections.

The deaths of my loved ones were missed opportunities, as they were in their late twenties/mid thirties, to do more with their lives and for our relationships to grow.

And I feared that the decision we were considering, for our family, could also lead to missed opportunities either way we went with it.

Over time, my therapist showed me how many of my emotional struggles and road blocks come when I am processing missed opportunities.

When we experienced our first three early pregnancy losses.

When our first three assisted reproductive technology cycles were not successful/didn’t lead to pregnancies.

When our second child, our daughter Molly, was born and died.

When relationships in my life didn’t develop or play out as I hoped and imagined they could/would.

When those I love and care about left this world too soon because of illness, accident or death by suicide.

When, during the 2016 Presidential Election, Hillary Clinton, the candidate I believed in, worked to elect, and was so excited about leading our country, lost the electoral college and thus did not become our Commander-in-Chief.

This week I am processing another missed opportunity, as I grieve the death of an old friend.

It is compounded by the fact that he died, of brain cancer, almost four years ago, but I didn’t learn about that until last Wednesday, when our 10th Friendaversary came up in my Facebook Memories and I went to his timeline to see how he was doing, as well what might be new in his life.

To say I was shocked is an understatement.

Were it not for social media, we’d likely have never reconnected after losing touch over 20 years ago.

That said, how did I manage to not visit his timeline or notice he wasn’t showing up in my news feed for over 4 years?

It happens, especially when we connect/reconnect with a lot of people online, both old friends and family, as well as develop new relationships with those we meet in person or find we have shared interests.

However, it doesn’t make it less painful, when we realize that loved ones were going through an extremely difficult time and we weren’t there for, or at least able to think about and pray, for them.

Missed Opportunity

Over the years, when I find out about the death of someone I care about, I have developed a process for working through my grief and making peace with missed opportunities related to our relationship.

My ritual includes gathering everything I have connected to that person, including correspondence, pictures, and mementos. And then I take time to go through it all, remembering the times we spent together and what made that person, as well as our relationship, special.

In this case, because my old friend and my relationship spanned a time when I journaled regularly, I was able to read what I wrote about how our connection grew, especially during the spring semester of my junior year in college (1996), when I lived and studied in London.

We met and became friends the previous summer (1995), working together at Camp Algonquin, in Algonquin, IL.

And it was after that summer, my first of two, working at Camp Algonquin, that I was inspired to study abroad in England, through meeting awesome people (including this old friend) who had traveled across the pond there to work at camp.

I met up with my old friend a number of times during my semester in London in 1996, spent Easter that year with his family at their home in Southampton, England (where the Titanic, which I’ve always had a fascination with, sailed from), and visited them again my last weekend overseas, before returning home.

I knew it wasn’t practical/understood it was unlikely that one of us would leave our home country, to start a new life with the other. But we entertained the fantasy together, towards the end of my time abroad, and I continued to dream about how that might be for a while, after I was home.

We exchanged letters during the summer of 1996.

And if my recollection serves me, I wrote to him more often than he did me, which was both frustrating and disappointing.

Missed Opportunity

I understood that my old friend wasn’t big on writing letters, but at the time (when the internet was in its infancy) we didn’t have a lot of options to keep in touch, and I was sad that he didn’t try harder to stay connected.

I returned to work at camp and he did not, having graduated from college in England and taking on a full-time job in the real world. I thought about him a lot that summer and did my best to make peace with the fact that our connection was fading and we would likely would not end up together.

And, eventually, we both moved on…

I met Bob that September 1996, we started dating in October that year, were engaged in March 1999 and married in September 2000.

No relationship or marriage is perfect, and of course Bob and I have had our share of challenges.

We continue to choose to love each other and work on us every day.

We are open with each other when we are struggling.

This week Bob has been incredibly patient and supportive, allowing me to share how learning of my old friend’s death has affected me.

I am grateful that I have not had to hide my grief and have been able to include him some in my processing the loss of what might have been.

Missed Opportunity

Another blessing has been connecting with my old friend’s younger sister, who was 16 years old during the semester I lived in England and visited their family.

His sister has appreciated getting to chat with someone who cares about and remembers her brother and I have gotten to learn more about his journey since the last time we had contact, soon after he found me again on Facebook in 2008.

Getting those blanks filled in has been painful at times, especially hearing what he went through during the 18 months that followed his diagnosis with inoperable brain cancer in January 2013.

Missed Opportunity

However, there have also been many wonderful things shared, especially related to how my old friend’s illness brought their family closer and the legacy he left through his four children.

I am still digesting the news of my old friend’s death.

I know grief is not linear and we never really get over losing loved ones.

I am grateful for how processing this has given Bob and me opportunities to reflect on our life together, how we got to where we our today in our marriage/with our own family, and what we want for us in the future.

I appreciate getting to know my old friend’s sister again, as an adult, and to see how his legacy lives on through her and their family.

I know my old friend is so very proud of his sister, their parents, his children, and all those continuing to adjust to life without him here in body, while keeping his memory alive.

As I’ve shared here over the years, it works for me to believe that the spirits of our loved ones, who have gone before us, can visit/send us signs through butterflies, rainbows, pennies and music.

Not long after I learned that my friend died on September 6, 2014, I was curious what I was doing that day, if by chance anything out of the ordinary had happened. I checked the calendar on my phone, and saw that Bob and I had attended a Garth Brooks concert that night.

Ironically, the next day I wrote and shared about an experience I had at the concert, when Garth sang “The Dance,” receiving what I believed to be a sign from another old and dear friend, who had died earlier that year in June. I couldn’t help but wonder if in some way my friend, who died that day, had a hand in that special moment as well.

A few days ago, on Saturday morning, we had a special visitor in our garden.

Sean was mowing the lawn when he noticed. He called me out to see and this beauty stuck around for the longest time…