The Collected Regrets of Clover

by Mikki Brammer

I didn’t expect to get to my mid-thirties and still have only one friend. That’s the thing about loneliness: no one ever chooses it.

To die, I knew, meant you were never, ever coming back. From that moment on, you only existed in people’s memories.

And from my experience, the ones who preferred not to think about it while living tended to have the most regrets while dying.

“It’s always important to be honest, Clover—even when people don’t hold you accountable.”

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.

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.

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.

The kindest thing I could do for them was to look them in the eye and simply acknowledge their presence as human beings. That’s when I’d promised myself I’d never turn away from someone’s pain, no matter how much I wanted to.

always wondered what each of these people must have been like in their youth, long before they’d ever considered that society might forget them—or at least no longer value them.

Looking other people’s pain in the eye was much easier than facing your own.

Impending death is a fickle thing. Someone with a terminal diagnosis might be vibrant and robust one day, only to spiral the next, as if mortality had suddenly set its foot on the gas.

I hadn’t had the chance to love many people, but I imagined it would be a privilege to be in service of their happiness.

People weren’t usually looking for a commentary to these sorts of revelations. They just needed someone to sit and listen to them without judgment. It’s tempting to try to fix it, to cheer them up. But the truth is, you’ll never find the right thing to say—because the right thing doesn’t exist.

“Don’t let the best parts of life pass you by because you’re too scared of the unknown.” One last wink. “Be cautiously reckless.”

It’s funny how you don’t notice how significant someone’s presence is until it’s no longer there.

Jessie trailing behind him in a short pink dress that, despite my limited fashion knowledge, didn’t seem funeral-appropriate.

When someone has always been there for you, it’s easy to assume they always will be. And then, one day, they’re not.

Don’t let the best parts of life pass you by because you’re too scared of the unknown.

“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 is just love looking for a place to settle.

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