The questions we ask, the stories we tell, and the choices we make are fateful.
Robert Frost used the metaphor of standing at the point where two roads diverge in a wood. The traveler must decide which to take. It is simply not possible to take both. Chris and I made such a fateful choice when, on the day she was diagnosed with a brain tumour, I asked her to marry me and she said “Yes.”
I like Frost’s poetry and The Road Not Taken has been a favourite for years. I used to be entranced by the idea that I had chosen the road less travelled (whatever that means) as though that made me somehow special. But I have let that fancy go.
What matters more to me now, is less the moment of choice than making a sustained and whole-hearted commitment to follow the road that has been chosen. Frost called his poem The Road Not Taken and the language has a wistful quality as though he will forever be wondering where the other road might have led.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
As a melancholic, I understand where that wistfulness comes from, but living with Chris taught me that regretting the lives we have not lived is a poor substitute for relishing the ones we have. We had a year as husband and wife and in the end it was enough to transform us both. It would be truer (if less poetic) to declare:
I shall be telling this, I forsee
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and we—
We took the same one, you and me,
And that has made all the difference.
I am also sure that the two of you together made a lot of difference to many other people as well. Px