Regrets

Here is a short piece I wrote. I hope you enjoy and get something out of it.

The ocean air caresses my weary head. The sun strokes my back like a lover. The warm sand fills the gaps between my toes. The beach comforts me in the regretful meandering of my mind.

My thoughts are a small gull, drifting on the breeze over the ever changing landscape of my deep blue past.

My Neighbor: a generous man in a funny way, but he loves to complain and whine about life, his family, his ex-wife and his ex-best friend.

He is a dam. Stopped. Unable to move on. His life restricted in a wall of unforgiveness. The life, his life, is slowly dwindling away.

“Hey Don. There is so much more. Come to church. Meet some people ,People who love and live, and show you the way to Jesus.

Over and over I plead, but it is just a joke.

“Jesus saves. Moses invests. And better a prophet than a total loss.”

He is not laughing now. The jokes have ceased.

I warn him to change his mind.

But the same negativity day after day wearies me. The still putrid water assaults my senses and so I become a prophet of doom, the herald of death.

“You need to change. It will kill you!”

Weeks pass. It is a nice sunny day lunch time and I see Dom at the letter box. He wants to talk, but I am so busy, and so wearied of his awful complaining. So I watch the sadness in his eyes as I politely decline, turn and walk away.

That afternoon his soul is required of him.

Is he my unfortunate figless tree, never to bear fruit again? Or am I speaking prophetically, a possibility sure to happen.

I thank God I look through a darkened glass. I fear my soul could not bear the thought of seeing with perfect clarity the destination of the future paths not taken by me or others. The wasted chances.

The past is clearer. Always. And I do have regrets.

I fobbed him off, robbing him of his final chance. Or maybe this time I would but up against the same dam wall as before.

I miss my infuriatingly stubborn friend, downcast and shattered, beautiful in his brokenness. I wonder if he blames me at all, or if he replays all of his chances over and over. When I said,

“Now is the time. Today is the day of salvation,”

Because not one of us can be assured of a tomorrow.