Musings on Bush

Kate Bush that is (get your mind out of the gutter). And more specifically her song This Woman’s Work.  It goes without saying that song is a tearjerker.  What person born in the 70s or 80s can hear it and not immediately picture Kevin Bacon in She’s Having a Baby sitting in a hospital waiting room with tears streaming down his face while his wife undergoes emergency surgery due to complications during the labor and delivery of their son.  

What resonates particularly for me in that song is the regret expressed over lost opportunities. “Of all the things I should’ve said that I never said. All the things we should’ve done that we never did.” When my brother, Maurice, passed away at the age of 56, I experienced deep regret.  Regret that I didn’t keep in touch with him better.  That I didn’t go see him in Singapore or Berkeley or various other amazing places that he lived over the years.  At the time, it seemed like not spending money on travel was the prudent thing to do.  We were saving to buy a home, have kids, pay off bills. But in retrospect, it felt like crucial missed opportunities to spend time with my brother in places he loved. My heart screamed: “Give me these moments back. Give them back to me.”

Since April 2021, when he passed, I’ve vowed to buy the plane tickets.  Take the adventures. See the world.  Mostly through running, which is another passion that Maurice and I shared.  Still a week or two before each trip, I get panic attacks over the expense.  Shouldn’t I be saving more for college, retirement, house repairs, braces (for myself and the kids tbh) etc? The answer is probably yes.  But when I reach the end of my life will I regret that I didn’t have the house repainted more often or will I regret the trip I didn’t take with the person who left the world too soon?

So on that note, after a day of panic and almost canceling my reservations, I’m fully looking forward to running the Big Sur Marathon on Sunday in Northern California, a place my brother loved.  And probably more than once as I’m climbing those big hills on the edge of the ocean reminding myself, “I know you have a little life in you yet.  I know you have a lot of strength left.”