What’s undone can’t always be done.
いつも取り返しがつくとは限らない。
My mother passed away seven years ago today, February 16th.
When I was a kid, I often disappointed her by my wrongdoings. I didn’t like her in my teens. She got hospitalized when I was nineteen. Soon after her whole body was paralyzed, and she couldn’t say a word since then — for almost twenty years. I completely lost an opportunity for apologizing her and fixing our relationship.
What’s done cannot be undone. And the opposite — what’s undone cannot be done — is sometimes true. If you want to restore the relationship with someone, you might want to do so while he or she is still alive and able to communicate with you. If you didn’t, you might have to live with regret for the rest of your life — like I do now.
The only consolation is that I’ve now learned how to be grateful to people around me. Probably this is the biggest life lesson my mother gave me.