Deconstructing with Della: No regrets with Nettie
November 13, 2017 |
| Nettie in France |
I got permission from my fabulous editor/friend, Nettie, to use her Facebook post as my blog content this week. I met this fast-thinking, quick-witted writer through my sister and instantly felt we added a third sister to our family. Nettie has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and is sharing her thoughts on FB. She knows she will not get around to doing a blog or writing a book so her posts will serve as a record for her 8 year old son.
The following post is about regrets and has a strong communication theme. I want my readers to benefit from her wisdom. By way of a little background, she was the automotive editor for the Toronto Sun and still does writing gigs about cars. That means she is often traipsing around the world driving fun vehicles. I selected the photo for this story based on our mutual love of Mini Coopers. Her writing will take you on a whirlwind romp through her thoughts. She will make you think.
Nettie's blog:
When you are forced to examine how you live your life and with whom you surround yourself, it's a great thing to find you have few regrets.
(And by the way, I don't think I'm going to die next week or next month. Just getting the contents of my head down for posterity. Or ridicule. Whatever.)
I regret ever getting in debt. I regret not being kinder to my body. I regret not telling some shitty people to fuck off sooner. I regret not throat-punching David Banfield and that dickwad at the gas station who asked me if my daddy was a baker.
And I regret not strong-arming my mom into going to Spain.
It was 2006, early fall I reckon, and in November I was going to Spain with Volvo to drive the new S40. Barcelona and Palma, Majorca. My scairdy cat, beautiful mom had by then been living with my overbearing, judgmental (but smart and wickedly funny) widowed grandmother for six years. My mom had always suffered "bad nerves," which most of the first world by then recognized as depression and anxiety. She chain smoked and was addicted to Valium. She too was smart and could be very funny. She was gentle and protective of me and my brother, and loved us heart and soul, but she had no idea how to stand up to her mother.
She had long wanted to see Gibraltar, as her father had been there during The War. All of my mother's desired travel destinations had a family connection. She wasn't interested in seeing Egypt or Tokyo but she went to Scotland every chance she got. She was disinterested in places where they didn't speak English and the food was cooked with unfamiliar spices, and she might miss a bus and be stranded somewhere with people with whom she couldn't communicate. It wasn't racism - her motives were often rooted in fear but this was not a fear of foreigners. Just that she might end up in an even scarier situation than everyday life.
When I told her about the trip and suggested she meet me in Barcelona and we'd borrow a car and drive to Gibraltar, I could tell even over the phone that her vivid imagination had been captured. I could hear the longing.
She was going to talk to her mother. A day or a week or two hours later, we talked again and she'd decided to go. She was so excited. We started to plan.
Then a day, a week or two hours later, she called and said she wasn't going. Her mother had said something to change her mind.
For the record, I loved my granny and she loved me. But she was a strong woman born at a time when women had few options, in a place (the far north of Scotland) where they didn't often question their imposed limitations. She married and had the first of five babies by 17 and, I think, resented it all. I once asked her if she could do it all again, would she have kids. She said, "Ach, I'd nae have even gotten married." She loved her kids, but she, like my mother, longed for something else, somewhere else, an adventure, some fun.
So, I pushed back a bit to my mom, told her not to let G'ma change her mind, but she wasn't going to change it back. She wasn't going and that was that. She was was sure strong-willed when it came to standing up FOR her mother.
Their arrangement after my grandfather died was that her mother would move in with her and pay the rent, so my mom could quit her job and look after her. Although she needed little looking after until a few years after that. She was strong as the proverbial ox for most of her 96 years.
Turns out the thing she had said that changed my mother's mind was that my mom shouldn't be spending money on a vacation while she paid the rent. Mean-minded and blinkered I thought - she certainly got more than her money's worth out of the deal - but my mother would never let me step in on her behalf and fight it out. Naturally enough. Who wants their kids fighting their battles for them? Ah well.
Anyway, that was that. I went to Spain. It was awesome. And my mother died six months later. #fuckcancer
After she was gone, a day came a week or a month or a year later when my grandmother told me through tears that she would always regret saying it. That she wished she had told her to have fun, and a week later welcomed her back from her fabulous trip to Spain.
My mom and I never talked about whether she regretted not going. We thought, I'm sure, that we had time to talk about whatever it occurred to us to talk about. Why wouldn't we? She was only 64.
Something else my granny once told me - that she wished she'd traveled more after my grandpa died. She was, after all, she said, only 83.
#noregrets #peaceandlovefellowbabies
To deconstruct Nettie's post, we will undoubtedly make some missteps in life but let's not regret words to our loved ones. #bestthirdsista
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