Releasing Regret

The Letter That Wouldn’t Unfold

Posted at dawn, coffee cooling on the windowsill

I tried to release regret this week. Not the big, thunderous kind—though I’ve carried those like stones in my pocket for decades—but the quiet, persistent ache of a letter I never sent to my sister, Sister Agnes, before she left the convent. She’d stayed, while I left at fifty to marry, and we’d drifted like two ships in fog. I’d never asked why.

So, I wrote. Not a grand confession, just a simple "I wonder if you ever thought of me?" on a single sheet of paper, folded carefully. I mailed it, my hands trembling with the hope that this small act would finally let the weight lift.

The reply came back in a week. Just a card, printed, with no name. “Thank you for your letter. I’ve moved on. Please don’t write again.”

I sat at my kitchen table, the words blurring. The letter hadn’t unmade the years. It hadn’t even been heard. I’d been trying to unmake time, to erase the silence between us, and instead, I’d only made it louder. I felt foolish. I’d spent years believing regret was a cage I needed to break out of—but what if it wasn’t a cage at all? What if it was just a part of the path, like the grooves in a worn wooden bench?

The aftermath wasn’t a lesson learned. It was a quiet, slow sinking. I sat with the shame of my own presumption for days. I’d thought my letter was an offering, but it was really a demand: Make it better. Make it go away. I’d forgotten that some things don’t mend—they simply become part of the landscape.

What I learned, slowly, is this: regret isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a companion. Not to be tossed overboard, but carried gently, like that stone in my pocket. I wonder sometimes if Agnes ever felt the same ache for me, or if she simply let it be. There’s a kind of grace in that—neither fixing nor forgetting, but simply holding the space where the silence lives.

I won’t write to her again. But I’ll sit with the regret, not as a burden, but as a quiet witness to a life lived, and a love that, though unspoken, was never truly lost.

— Gertrude Carroll, still wondering