On a beautiful summer day last year, I found myself standing next to my wife, looking at her. She didn’t look her normal self: she wore make-up, which she rarely did, and her hair was done in an unusual way. Also, she was lying in a coffin.<\/p>\n\n\n
I didn’t know what funerals in Greece were like and just let things happen. I didn’t know whether there would be an opportunity to see her before the funeral, but there was and thus I was standing there, thinking of something to say.<\/p>\n\n\n
I thanked her. For everything. And I promised her I would go and do great things. I don’t know the exact words I used but that was the gist of it. Then I went outside again.<\/p>\n\n\n
I didn’t say sorry. Death makes a lot of things alright and the things I regretted or wished I had done differently suddenly didn’t matter any more.<\/p>\n\n\n
But now, more than a year later, I am sorry. I am sorry that I didn’t fully appreciate her health problems. Not because they likely caused her early death, but because they made her life before that more difficult than I realised.<\/p>\n\n\n
I am also sorry I didn’t fully appreciate her difficult childhood and how that had continued to affect her.<\/p>\n\n\n
I think in practical terms I did alright to make her life easier and she certainly showed her appreciation for that. But it isn’t always about the practical things. I wish I had understood her a bit better back then. It would have helped her. It would have helped me.<\/p>\n\n\n
Saying genuinely sorry is one of the hardest things to do. I certainly haven’t always been able to do so at times when I should have, especially because a good apology should come with a real intention to do better next time.<\/p>\n\n\n
I don’t know what my next times will look like. But I know that I am able to do better. Because I am genuinely sorry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On a beautiful summer day last year, I found myself standing next to my wife, looking at her. She didn’t look her normal self: she wore make-up, which she rarely did, and her hair was done in an unusual way. Also, she was lying in a coffin. I didn’t know what funerals in Greece were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lapsed.ordinary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}