Regrets – “I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention”.

My Grand Daughter, IGY now aged 6, gave me a wonderful book for Christmas 2019 and I have just got around to reading it fully, as I now have more time available to do the relaxing things in life.

It’s called ‘Dear Grandad’ from me to you A Journal of a Lifetime. There are now many such books on the market, and I suggest all Grand Children (or their parents) send one at the earliest opportunity to their beloved Grand Parents, and hopefully they may, in return get some wonderful stories to read and enjoy, and perhaps tug at the heart strings.

You have to fill in the many pages of your life’s memoires, and while compiling this it threw up one heading, I thought I would share my views with you… “Biggest Regret”.

Like most of us, initially I didn’t think I had any significant regrets, but I finally wrote the following:-

“………I regret not talking more with my dad about his life and the things that you are now asking me, but I never wanted to hurt or embarrass him and therefore didn’t ask difficult questions of him and especially his recollection of being a Japanese Prisoner of War in Java and his experiences at such a young age.

I now realise he would have openly discussed anything with me if I had only taken the opportunity to ask……..”

After my father died, I understood more than at any other time, that as a family it is important that we are able to discuss anything and there should be no closed agendas.

Following my dad’s stroke, I did at least ask him to write his memoirs and he did this to the best of his subsequent restricted ability, and this at least provides me with a record of the basic facts, but perhaps unfortunately, not fully the inner person. It also made me more convinced to start the Blog.

I know when many of us are asked if we have any regrets in life, most quickly respond ‘No, none what so ever’. Some quote “I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention” (FS), and I am sure, we would all like to think we are having or had a full life without any real regrets.

However, most of us if we thought about it would I guess, have to acknowledge that we didn’t or haven’t passed on all our life experiences to our loved ones, and surely that is most regrettable, not for us but for our family and future descendants.

So, if you get a chance, talk, or write to your kids and more importantly your Grand Children, and let them know about the good things in life you experienced…. you owe it to them and yourself.