Missed opportunities can be haunting

Life would be so much easier if we knew without a doubt we were making the right choice at every juncture. We wouldn’t have to be so hard on ourselves about all those missed opportunities. Always wondering what if ….

A few weeks ago, I discovered that a favorite cousin from my childhood had died. Eight years earlier, we had briefly connected on email and talked about getting together. But it never happened.

Bonnie Rae was the daughter of my mama’s only sister. She was a month younger than me and a hoot to hang out with. During high school we were best buds even though she lived in Bradenton, Florida, and I lived in Phenix City, Alabama.

Always a clown, Bonnie Rae couldn’t resist goofing off for the camera.

Our families visited about once a year. When we were teenagers, Bonnie Rae spent a few summers with us by herself because the two of us had so much fun together. I also suspect her mother was happy for a break from her rambunctious daughter.

Like her mother and Uncle Donald, Bonnie Rae was a whiz on the piano and organ. Even in high school, she was in demand to play for weddings and other church or community functions. At our house she’d delight us with her boogie-woogie renditions.

When we got to college – me at University of Alabama and Bonnie Rae at Florida State University – things changed. Before either of us reached our 19th birthday, she got married and started a family, dropping out of school.

She asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding in March 1965, which I did. But I don’t remember seeing her anymore after that.

Of course, our mothers stayed in touch and still occasionally visited. I sort of kept up with Bonnie Rae through Mama and our grandmama, who always knew what was going on with her 30 grandchildren. Then I just got busy living my own life.

In 2011, I put together a brief history of Grandmama Huckabee’s life from her writings that had been passed down to me. I tried then to locate as many cousins on Mama’s side as I could to share that story. I found email addresses for about half of them, including Bonnie Rae.

Bemoaning the missed opportunities

We exchanged a dozen or so emails. She certainly hadn’t lost her edge, still making me laugh with her crazy but sporadic emails. We bemoaned all the missed opportunities from the last 46 years, but she repeatedly put me off when I asked if I could come visit her.

She evaded most of my questions about her life and only gave me brief snippets. She was living in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she taught music in a private school and was the organist and music director for a Presbyterian church.

Her parents were dead and both of her older brothers had died several years earlier, one of lung cancer and one in a car crash. She had one son who lived nearby with his family and one who lived in Oregon with his family. 

She said she was lonely but that she had no room for company. I offered to stay somewhere else. She ignored me. The “no room” was obviously more than physical. 

Now, I wish I had just gone anyway. It was about an eight-hour drive from where I was living in Mobile, Alabama, to St. Petersburg. I had already looked up her address on Google maps. 

But I didn’t go. Instead I gave her space, figuring she’d eventually come around.

I received a couple of non-sensical group emails from her, then everything went silent. 

If only I had insisted

Inspired by finding my college friend a couple of months ago after more than 40 years, I decided to try again to reconnect with Bonnie Rae. Maybe whatever was going on before had been sorted out by now.

While looking for updated contact information for her, I instead found her obituary. I was stunned. She died in December 2015, about three years after the last email I received. Cause of death was not mentioned. 

Besides being deeply saddened, I felt like I hadn’t been a very good cousin. I should have been more insistent about getting together. 

I can’t help but wonder if I could have made any difference. Damn those missed opportunities.