Regrets

The matriarch has no regrets but one of which I am aware.  And that regret has nothing to do with her family or my husband or the distant past.  My mother-in-law has quite a history when it comes to men: she has been married 3 times, once divorced, once widowed and once separated; the last separation did not evolve into a divorce because her former husband died.  She was 92 and he was in his late seventies; I think she truly loved him but couldn't live with him.  I can't imagine getting married in one's eighties and then getting divorced in one's nineties, but when one has lived so long, you may as well choose the life you want.  Which makes me wonder about her regrets...Of all the things in her life, she has told me a niece's attendance of her third wedding with her son rather than her husband bugged her the most.  Of all the things.  We were not at that wedding and it drives my husband crazy when the matriarch starts to complain about it.  The groom is now dead.  The marriage is long over.  Yet, my mother-in-law still regrets her nephew's absence at the wedding; she doesn't dwell on her son's absence.  That wedding and marriage cost my husband a tremendous amount of angst and the separation cost him a lot of money.  It reveals the kind of mother my mother-in-law was when my husband was growing up.  It tells me people don't really change; I mean, of course they do, but they have to want to become different people.  Individuals get stuck somehow when they remain oblivious to the past; they are doomed to repeat it.  When my mother-in-law tells me God has left her here because she still has something to accomplish, I look at her and feel so much pity.  My husband tries so hard and she still regrets a nephew's absence over his....