Is it considered regret if you could not control what happened? Not even regret at what did happen, but instead, regret that what you wish had occurred hadn’t, due to circumstances beyond your control? Regret is a feeling that eats away at a memory, worming its way around you. It obscures your vision, making the event blur and blend, even as you reach out to grasp it, desperately trying to see it for what it was, not for what you now only remember. Unfortunately, when that memory revolves around a deceased loved one, regret squeezes you harder because it knows. It knows that no one can help you clear your vision. The only other person who could have helped erase your regret is gone.
During the first week of March in my senior year of high school, my friend came to me with a scholarship opportunity, one where we would have to create a children’s book. Even at the time, I knew that she was using me, because she had no artistic ability. I also knew that I was using her because I did not qualify for the contest because I was not living in the correct state. She was. The rules were simple enough: write and illustrate a children’s book about any type of diversity. The only hiccup was that it was due the second week of April. I had not even five weeks to illustrate 16 full pages, and that would be after we had written the story.
It was around this same that my grandmother was admitted into the hospital. She was one of those grandmothers that ran around as if age was simply something she wore. There was a time when she told me to call my dad if I heard a loud noise. I later discovered her on the roof, changing the Christmas wreath. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized the potential loud noise would have been her falling. My grandmother got old quickly, not gradually. It was a surprise attack, taking everyone off guard. After smoking from 13 years old, she got COPD, a condition that takes your breath away. She was a vain creature, refusing to wear oxygen, especially in public. It is hard to remain vain in a hospital gown.
The book was not a team project. I conceptualized the story while my friend simply wrote down what she heard me say. Did you know that that made her the author? I storyboarded, designed, and illustrated the 16 full pages while going to school full-time and working. Three to four hours per night, I worked on my book. It was not even in a style that I enjoyed, not even the art style that I considered my own because I had to develop a way of drawing that fit into what little time I had. I wasn’t proud of the art in my book because I did not consider it mine. A major component of the story involved golden hearts, created out of fine micro glitter that stuck to everything. It coated me, sticking to me even as I sat on the floor of the shower, numb yet trying to scrub everything away. It clung to the dark circles under my eyes, dying my hair with specks of gold. This time of my life was called Glitter Hell. An artistic friend even made a little comic of me to commemorate the process.
I would visit my grandmother in the nursing home. She would go from there to the hospital and back. I tried to show her my wips, my works in progress of the pages. I tried to tell her about my story, about how this was my dream that had taken the form of this contest. I tried to tell her about how much I was trying, trying so hard. She had no idea what was going on. Like her internal youth, her mind had vanished, crumbling, the memories escaping out of her reach. And even as I tried to collect them, rounding them up for her, explaining gently what I was doing over and over, they just kept leaking out, gone. Those gaps included our visits. Nothing hurt more than the time she had just that one moment of true clarity to berate me not coming to see her more often, even though I had been there every day that week. I just put the take out that I had brought into the fridge, next to all the other abandoned white boxes. I eventually stopped telling her about my story. I decided that I would share it with her later on, when it was finished and she could see the final product and be proud.
The book was done and edited and sent in. I had done it. My friend had attributed very little of the process. She didn’t care about it; she simply cared if I had done well enough for us to win. Maybe she was not as malicious as I remember. I know she wasn’t. But those memories blur. I focused on the bitterness I felt. I focused on finishing high school. I focused on my grandmother. The regret focused on me.
My grandmother went home to die. After traveling between the nursing home and the hospital for weeks, she spent her first and final night back at home. She was gone before morning. I went to work anyway the next day. When my supervisor stumbled across me leaning against the bottom shelf that I was supposed to be dusting, I told her. She was outraged that I was even there that day. But what was back at home? The book had been sent in, but the supplies were still strewn across the table, the glitter still coating everything it had touched. It clung to everything, even as I sat there at that table after being sent home. I would have never thought that regret could sparkle.
She never knew that I won the contest. She never knew that I had to accept my award in my prom dress because winner announcement awards were the same night. She never knew that I received scholarship money that had to be split with my partner. She never knew that I did the majority of the work and shared equally the credit. She never knew that my book was on the shelves of public libraries and elementary schools in the state. She never knew about the book signings and the library children’s workshops where kids picked their favorite character to put on a bookmark. She never knew.
Regret changes a memory. What should be a ridiculously happy achievement in my life is swallowed by the events that surrounded it. All I had wanted, to be a published author, happened when I was newly 18. But when I try to peer at the memory, the vision is hazy from the gauze of death creating a film that cannot be penetrated. The negative memories flow much more freely than the positive ones that flutter gently against the funeral shroud. My regret hammers into me whenever I look at what should be my accomplishment.
She never knew. And so, I regret.
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