The smell of lilies was suffocating. It was the scent of expensive apologies a floral veil thrown over the stench of decaying flesh and forgotten dreams.
Standing at the back of the parlor, tucked into the shadows where the mahogany paneling met the velvet drapes, I watched the performance. Up at the altar, the son of the deceased a man whose suit fit him better than his grief clutched the lectern with practiced solemnity.
"My father lived a full life," the son's voice wavered, a calculated tremor that drew a collective sob from the front rows. "He was a good man. A happy man. And though he spoke often of the things he never got to do the travels he postponed, the books he never wrote, the words he left unsaid he died with a smile. He always said his only regrets were the things he was almost able to do. But in the end, it was a life of happiness."
A dry, bitter taste rose in my throat.
Happiness?
I looked at the polished lid of the casket. Inside lay a man who had spent eighty years compromising. He had traded his passions for a pension, his ambition for predictability. Now, his own flesh and blood stood there, rebranding a lifetime of almost as a victory.
How could a life spent choking on regret be called happy? I thought, my gaze sweeping over the nodding mourners. If you die wishing for more, you didn't live. You survived waiting patiently for a finish line that was always going to be a hole in the dirt.
To me, regret wasn't bittersweet. It wasn't poetic.
It was a cancer.
A tally of every moment you were too afraid or too weak to take what you wanted.
The son continued, droning on about "peaceful transitions" and "cherished memories," but I stopped listening. Peace was overrated. Comfort was a trap. I didn't want a gentle ending wrapped in flowers and lies.
If I were the one in that box, I wouldn't want lilies. I'd want absence. I'd want the room to feel smaller without me in it. I'd want the world to notice the loss on its balance sheet.
I turned away before the first handful of dirt struck the wood.
I didn't know then that my own finish line was much closer than I expected.
I didn't know I was about to be given another chance to test my philosophy in full.
This time, regret would be a word reserved for my enemies.