REGRETS - by Yemi And The Pen

It is that day of the year again. The day that marks five years since I said words I will never get to take back. There I was, sitting in the chair next to my bedside table, absolutely exhausted. Work had left me with nothing but sore, aching muscles. I felt like a candle burning on its last inch of wax. The word ‘Mum’ flashed across my phone screen, indicating an incoming call. I had half a mind to let it continue ringing without answering, but I couldn’t ignore my mother. So I picked up the call. We exchanged pleasantries and talked about a few nothings, until she brought up the very topic I always tried to avoid. My brother. We hadn’t had this conversation in a while. I thought she had let it go.Why now? I hadn’t spoken to or seen my brother for months, and I doubted that would change anytime soon. The subject was a wound that had never quite scarred over. She tried to persuade me to be the bigger person and apologize, claiming that a lady should not be so obstinate. And then she started preaching about how relationships between siblings should be cherished above all else. She sang the same refrain over and over again. I wondered if she ever told any of this to my brother. Wondered if she ever persuaded him to apologize as well. So I put my wonderings into words and asked her. She merely replied that my brother had always been his own person. Of course he had. I had never been particularly interested in this conversation before. But that night, something in me snapped. Maybe it was the exhaustion, or maybe it was my frustration at how this discussion never led to any resolution. Whatever the reason, the thread holding my patience together finally snapped. I talked to my mother in a tone I had never used with her before. “You always ask me to be the bigger person and apologize to Bode, but I wonder how many times you’ve actually told him the same thing. Because it’s always me, isn’t it? I’m always the one who has to be the bigger person.Forgive and forget, but forgiveness is a two-way street. He doesn’t get to walk away without any responsibility while I carry all of it like I’m the only one to blame.Just because I’m younger doesn’t mean my feelings matter less. I get hurt too, Mum. It feels like you always forget that.And you’ll never understand how complicated this is between us. You’ve never had siblings.” I didn’t let her get another word in before I ended the call. She did not call me back. I knew she meant well, really. And with that thought, I went to take a shower. When I came back to my phone, I found two unread messages from… my brother? My stomach dropped. She’s gone Mum is dead. She was in a car accident. And so here I am again, sitting in that chair, by that bedside table.As if I could take it all back, as if I could go back and fix it. One thing that will always stay with me is the knowledge that the last words I spoke to her were spoken in anger. And they can never be taken back. Those words have echoed through me for five years. They haunt the quiet corners of my mind. They follow me like a shadow that refuses to leave. Maybe I would be at peace if I did the one thing Mum always wanted: for me to talk to my brother and apologise to him. Mum always believed that if we just talked long enough, we would find our way back to each other. I think she believed that right until the end. And now the one person who wanted us to fix things is the one person who will never see it happen. I still haven’t talked to Bode. Not since that day, that night. Not since the funeral and I’m not particularly sure when I’ll work up the courage to do so.

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