The “I Should Have...” Thoughts

There’s a part of grief that doesn’t always get talked about out loud.

It’s the part that sounds like:

I should have called.

I should have visited more.

I should have gone that last time.

Those thoughts can show up quietly... or they can replay until they feel louder than everything else.

I understand that kind of guilt.

When I was in high school, my grandfather died of cancer.

He was my dad’s dad, and he wasn’t just someone we saw on holidays. He was part of our

routine, part of our normal.

Every Tuesday night, my dad would bring us to my grandparents’ house for dinner. And my

grandfather, we called him “Rie,” because when I was little I couldn’t say “Grampie” was one of those steady people who made Tuesday nights feel like home.

My brother and I even had a system for who got to sit next to him.

There was this comfy chair on wheels. The “rolley chair” and we fought over it like it was the

best seat in the world. We actually marked it on the calendar: who had it next, and who got to sit closest to Rie.

Looking back, it sounds small. But it mattered.

Because sitting next to him meant jokes, stories, and sometimes him quietly eating my vegetables so I could leave the table faster.

When we were little, it was the playful stuff.

“Rie’s home from the club! Let’s hide under the table and see if he notices.”

Racing to open the door for him. Grabbing him a “Coke” from the fridge like it was our official job.

As I got older, it became quieter, but not less close.

He helped me with accounting homework. We talked. We sat side by side like we always had. And we always had our handshake. It changed every time, but the fact that we had it never did.

Rie got polio when he was around ten or twelve, and it never stopped him from being himself. My dad was always in awe of him on the golf course. Driving the ball, falling, getting right back up on his crutches like it was nothing, and moving on.

He coached softball and umpired a bit. Had a love cards, pool, and cribbage. My grandmother used to say he was so good at baseball he could’ve gone pro if he hadn’t gotten sick as a kid. And my aunt always talked about how much he loved being in the sun.

And honestly, I think everyone was in awe of him, because he did all of it on crutches.

Then he got cancer. I was sixteen.

At first, I still went to Tuesday dinners. It still felt like our normal.

But over time he got sicker. Eventually he was bedridden.

And this is where the guilt comes in. . .

I couldn’t bring myself to visit as much, not because I didn’t love him, but because I couldn’t

stand seeing him like that. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to act like myself in that room. I kept telling myself I’d go soon.

Then one day, I came home from school and decided I was going to visit. My boyfriend at the time was going to come with me. I knew Rie wasn’t doing good.

My phone rang.

It was my dad.

He didn’t make it.

And to this day, I still feel something about not going sooner. About the visits I avoided. About the moments I thought I had more time for.

If you carry an “I should have...” like that, I want to say this gently:

Guilt often shows up where love was.

Sometimes it’s the mind trying to create control in a situation that had none. Sometimes it’s the heart trying to rewrite an ending that felt unfinished. Sometimes it’s simply the truth that we didn’t know how to do it perfectly.

Avoiding a bedside doesn’t mean the love was absent.

It often means the pain was too close.

And still... the guilt can stay.

If you’re carrying guilt, I hope you hear this: love is still the loudest part of your story.

And if you’d like, share one memory of the person you miss. Something small, something real.

Written by Ashley Donovan