There are regrets that stay with you.
They’re not loud or dramatic.
They’re just a quiet pain — a shadow that never really fades.

It’s been more than twenty-five years now. A whole lifetime, really. Somewhere in the late nineties or early 2000s. But the memory is still sharp, like a movie I can’t stop watching. And it still hurts.

I was so young when I left home for that new job. I landed in a new city, in a new state. I didn’t know the language. I didn’t know a single person. It was a sea of strangers. Every day felt like walking into a room where you didn’t belong. A deep, cold kind of lonely.

And then, there he was.
A colleague from another department. About ten years older than me, with a kind face and a calm voice. He spoke both my languages. When he talked, it felt like warmth itself — the sound of home.

I was just a bachelor trying to find my way. He and his wife didn’t have children, and somehow, they adopted me into their lives.
Many nights, I had dinner at their home. They treated me like a younger brother. His wife would pack food for me to take back — little boxes of rice and curry. It wasn’t just food. It was care. It was their way of saying, “You are not alone here.”

But life has its turns. The company began to struggle. Orders slowed. The air grew heavy. I got scared and found another job. I had to. I felt guilty leaving him behind, but survival has its own cruel logic. He stayed, hoping things would turn around. They didn’t. The company went bankrupt, and his world began to collapse.

He was a proud man. He never asked for help. Not once.
Until that one day.

The phone rang, and it was him.
His voice wasn’t the same. The warmth was gone. It sounded tired — like someone who had been holding too much for too long.
He asked if I could lend him a small amount. Just a little help.

My heart dropped. I had nothing.
This was before digital transfers and online wallets. Back then, money lived in your pocket.
And mine was empty. I had just spent everything on a new computer — a box that, even now, I can’t look back on without shame.

I told him the truth, my voice shaking.
He simply said, “No worries.”

That was it. No anger. No disappointment. Just quiet understanding.
Those were the last words I ever heard from him.

A few months later, the news came — heart failure.
Gone. Just like that.

I remember sitting there, numb. The world felt hollow. My mind replayed that phone call again and again. His voice. My silence. The stupid computer.
His wife moved away soon after, taking her grief to another city.

And me?
I carried mine quietly. For weeks, I was lost in guilt. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t tell anyone. It was a private storm.

Time did its job. It softened the sharp edges. But it never erased the mark.
Back then, I was young and distracted. Life was fast, and the noise covered everything. But now… now life has slowed. The noise is gone. And in that quiet, old memories wake up.

They sit beside me — those dinners, that laughter, that one phone call.
They’re not just memories anymore.
They’re lessons.

They taught me what real kindness looks like.
And they taught me, in the hardest way, what regret feels like.

Maybe this is what growing older means — carrying the stories you can’t fix. You can’t sell that computer now. You can’t make that call again.
All you can do is carry it.

So I carry it.
It’s part of me now — that quiet, lingering pain.
A reminder to be kind.
A reminder that sometimes, the words “no worries” can be the heaviest words in the world.
A reminder that we’re all shaped by the love we were given — and the love we failed to give.