One of my favorite meals to make is potato leek soup with jalapeno biscuits.  It’s been awhile since the weather and my schedule cooperated for this endeavor, but this Thursday, I had the time and the day was chilly, so…  While I was rolling out the biscuits, I happened to also be listening to Adele 21.  I don’t know which it was – the Adele, or the rolling pin – but I thought about Simone, my niece, who died two years ago last month.

Simone loved to sing, and she loved to bake. Five years ago, when she lived with us for a time, she baked a rhubarb pie and spent some time on the crust, adding a heart detail on the top of it.  A couple months ago, I thought about that pie and said to Kami, hadn’t that been wonderful, and rhubarb pie was my favorite – and Kami said, “Mom, she made that pie for you.”

I am pierced by this memory. It is one of the harshest thing I know, the way we humans sometimes completely miss each other, and how sometimes we don’t get to come back and try again. I carry that now, and it fuels my efforts; I try not to miss the signals of those who are still here. I fail at that more than I’d like. Perhaps that’s what regret is for: to use our sorrows about the past to shine more awareness on what we still have a chance to love today.