When regret visits

Somebody told me once that the price of longevity is regret. With a little more than seven decades under my belt now, the list of regrets is longer than I care to dwell on. Those regrets visit sometimes in the middle of the night, unannounced and unwelcome. Too frequently, they involve someone who is no longer with us. 

I guess that’s to be expected at my age. I’ve lived a wonderful life with wonderful people who loved me and I loved them. But my friend Steve’s death this year hit me hard. It wasn’t unexpected. Pancreatic cancer gives no quarter. When he died, the memories came back, smelling of mule sweat and saddle leather. The terrible mule wreck on Horse Creek, and the pitch-dark and rain as we made our painful way out. I spent the next few days as a guest of the kind people at St. John’s Hospital in Jackson. I don’t remember much from that time, but I remember that every time I woke, he was there. Sometimes we’d talk, sometimes he’d just sit there. He never quit me through it all. And that is one of the things that I loved most about him. It was never about him — it was about everyone else, and he never quit.

And so, the regret comes sneaking in. I should have visited him before he passed. I should have been there for him and for his kids and his companion the way he was for me. I guess it shouldn’t be any big surprise that when you hit a certain age, your friends are going to show an alarming tendency to move on to the next life. But somehow, I never dreamed that I’d have to get good at dealing with their passing.

It’s not like I didn’t have some experience with the deaths of people that I love:

Old Gus, my dad, my hero and my best friend, died in 1967. I was only 12. But he taught me to saddle my own horse, to drive a stick shift and to love Wyoming, its history, wild things and wild places. I regret the adventures we never got to have together.

His best friend, Luke, took me under his long and powerful wing, making me part of his own family and working me like a rented mule. He died a decade later, and I missed his funeral. I should have been there for him and for his family.

Harriet, my grandmother and the acknowledged matriarch of the Gasson clan, died only a few years later. She lost the only two men she would ever love in the span of 11 months back in 1920, and she was sad to the end of her days. I couldn’t find tears to mourn her when she passed. I should have.

Doug was my first workplace mentor. He was brilliant, profane, often self-destructive and nearly impossible to work for. But he gave me wonderful opportunities I probably didn’t deserve. We parted on less than perfect terms, and then he died. I didn’t go to his funeral, and I didn’t forgive him. I should have.

Ken hired me almost right out of college, and was my next teacher. He was the toughest, hardest-working human being I knew. I totaled a $50,000 piece of equipment one day, but he didn’t fire me. He just said, “Shit happens, kid. Don’t worry about it.” I should have been there for him after his wife died. I wasn’t. 

Grace was my mom. When Old Gus died, she became a single parent to a big, angry young son. She did so with characteristic love and kindness. She taught me to love books and learning and she loved me from the moment of my birth to the moment of her death. I should have been a better son. 

So many people, so many regrets. But maybe that’s not how you keep score. I’m certain that’s not how you honor someone who loved you and taught you and cut a trail through life for you to follow. Maybe it’s more about the memories — the people pass on, but the memories remain. 

The memories made Steve a great friend to me and to so many, and a great mentor to us all. He lived his life by what he knew to be true. I have a picture of him riding the dun-colored mule Bugs and leading the black mule Silas across a meadow north of Spread Creek. Ol’ Silas is loaded with hundreds of pounds of bison meat, plus the head and cape. It was my bison, a whopper of a bull about 11 years old and scarred from tail to topknot with the battles of his life. It’s October in that photo, the light is golden and the shadows are long. It’s a Mark Gocke photo, and it’s beautiful like all his work. But maybe more important than its beauty is its truth. The truth is this: We share this place with the bison and the elk and the grizzlies. We share it with each other. And in the end, we pass from this place and this life, just like that old bison. The memories remain.

Before we go, we can make those memories. We can teach and support and lift one another, like Steve. We can step in when things are hard and help those who are in pain, like Luke. We can forgive others their mistakes, like Ken. And we can give others the opportunity to shine, like Doug. We can be kind and gracious and loving like Grace. And we can teach the things that matter, like Old Gus. Those are the things that keep the regrets at bay when they come sneaking around in the middle of the night. And they’re the things that endure long after any of us remain, the reminders of our humanity.