The Collected Regrets of Clover

by Mikki Brammer

subconscious was a diligent accountant.

but it always felt disrespectful to slot right back into routine life when someone had just lost theirs.

Giving someone the chance to be seen at their most vulnerable is much more healing than any words. And it was my honor to do that—to look them in the eye and acknowledge their hurt, to let it exist undiluted—even when the sadness was overwhelming.

I imagined that was what it felt like to be held in a tight hug, but since I hadn’t experienced many of those, I wasn’t completely sure.

I always had the best intentions of putting away my clean laundry, but those intentions usually dwindled somewhere between the laundry room and my front door. So for the past week, the basket had sat in its usual place in front of my closet, ready to be cherry-picked.

Lola and Lionel had reclaimed their positions snuggled in among the clean clothes, ensuring that I would continue to be a woman whose outfit wasn’t complete unless it was sprinkled with cat hair.

Not that it mattered—except for Leo, there was no one in my life to notice me getting older.

I loved the idea of preparing someone for a journey rather than simply saying goodbye.

there was something beautiful about the tenuous reality of being human.

If I ever analyzed my records statistically—and one day, I might—that theme would probably turn out to be the one I heard most often. I wish I’d told them how much I love them. Sometimes people were referring to parents or spouses, other times it was friends. In almost every case, it was because they’d been so busy in their lives that they took their loved ones for granted. Or they just never knew how to find the right words.

It sounded kind of thrilling, actually. But, then again, loving someone inevitably also meant one day losing them—if not by rejection or betrayal, then most certainly by death. At least when you’re alone, there’s no risk of getting hurt. After all, you can’t lose something you don’t have.

who told me that the most important lesson she’d ever learned was to listen more than you speak.

A symptom of spending a lot of time alone with your thoughts like I did was that sometimes they could run a little wild.

“That’s true, Tabitha. But the thing is, we all know we’re going to die—that’s guaranteed. So shouldn’t we be making the most of our lives anyway?”

After more than a decade, the pain had dulled slightly, but my grief hadn’t diminished. It had just taken a different shape.

I’d learned the hard way that when people ask you how you’re doing after a loved one’s death, they don’t really want to know. They want to hear that you’ve moved on because they can’t stand to look at your pain. And when I didn’t move on, the emails gradually trickled to nothing.

It frustrated me that society was so determined to quantify grief, as if time could erase the potency of love. Or, on the other hand, how it dictated that grief for someone you knew fleetingly should be equally as fleeting. But while a mother who miscarries might not have ever had the chance to hold that child, they had plenty of time to love them, to dream and hope for them. And that means their grief is twofold—they’re not just grieving the child, but the life they never got to experience. Who are we to tell anyone their pain isn’t worthy?

“You know, everyone talks about how they want to live forever, but they don’t think about what it’s like when your wife and all your friends are dead, and you’re the only one left. It’s lonely.”

As I clasped my hands around the ceramic mug, a familiar longing niggled at me. An incongruous tug-of-war between the need for solitude and the craving for emotional connection—I didn’t want company, but I didn’t want to feel alone.

But since death had shaped my life from the time I was five, I wanted to observe it, to decode it. I wanted to find sense in the thing that felt so senseless.

That was the day that I began to realize how hard it is to be anything but what the world already thinks you are.

“If you want something you don’t have,” he’d said, “you have to do something you’ve never done.”

This was the first time in years that I’d been touched with such an expression of care and energy meant only for me.

Poor clover is so touch deprived

Swaddling myself in a blanket, I settled in for the evening, finding comfort in one of the only relationships I knew I could count on.

Avenue, I was keenly aware of my body. The way my clothing felt against it, the way it moved. It was the same rush I’d get from watching a love story unfold on TV, or indulging in Julia and Reuben’s tender kisses from afar. Yet, somehow this was different. This time, the stimulus had come from within.

What was it like to turn heads like that, to assert your presence with such charisma, so unafraid to be seen and admired?

To observe someone swept away by the thing they’re most passionate about, most skilled at—what some call “flow”—is one of life’s great privileges.

I sometimes suspect his relationships have less to do with compatibility and more the fact that he doesn’t like to be alone.”

So this was how people kept their homes so elegantly minimal—by cramming all their real belongings out of sight.

The two of them, lost in a world of their own. And me, alone in mine.

“Because every time I imagined dying, I would freak myself out by thinking about how that was it for me. You know, like, for the rest of eternity, I would no longer exist. And eventually, everyone who knew me would die, and then I’d be forgotten forever. It just made me feel so isolated.”

“But the secret to a beautiful death is to live a beautiful life. Putting your heart out there. Letting it get broken. Taking chances. Making mistakes.”

It’s so easy to see your parental figure through that lens alone, to think that their existence has always revolved around yours. But before they were parents, they were simply human beings trying to navigate life as best they could, dealing with their own disappointments, chasing after their own dreams. And yet we often expect them to be infallible.

Grief, I’d come to realize, was like dust. When you’re in the thick of a dust storm, you’re completely disoriented by the onslaught, struggling to see or breathe. But as the force recedes, and you slowly find your bearings and see a path forward, the dust begins to settle into the crevices. And it will never disappear completely—as the years pass, you’ll find it in unexpected places at unexpected moments. Grief is just love looking for a place to settle.

The secret to a beautiful death is living a beautiful life.

I’d only ever mentioned the notebooks once to Hugo. This must be what Claudia was talking about—what it felt like to be really seen by someone.

Missed by two people. That felt almost unbelievable.

Be cautiously reckless.

In the air below the cliffs, two distinct clouds of ashes danced together before descending gracefully into the sea. Claudia and her great love were reunited at last.

Their fate had somehow determined mine.

The fact that all of us were entangled—that everyone on the planet somehow shaped the course of one another’s lives, often without realizing it—felt like almost too much for me to comprehend.

And instead of constantly asking ourselves the question of why we’re here, maybe we should be savoring a simpler truth: We are here.