told me that Mr. Bennett had passed away peacefully the night before. I was devastated, though I hadn’t expected it to hit me this hard. He had opened up to me in a way that no one else seemed to have been able to reach him.

“I’m so sorry,” the nurse said softly. “He didn’t have many visitors, but he mentioned you during his last days. He said you were the one person he could talk to, the one who listened.”

My heart sank. I hadn’t realized how much I had meant to him, how our quiet companionship had given him comfort in his final days. But there was something more.

The nurse handed me an envelope. “This was for you,” she said gently.

Inside was a letter, written by Mr. Bennett. It was short but filled with the weight of his regret and the hope that his son might forgive him if he ever found this letter. The last line stood out the most: “If you ever have a chance, tell someone you love them before it’s too late.”

I sat there, holding the letter, feeling the weight of his words, and the message was clear: don’t wait to fix what’s broken. The regret was heavy, but it also felt like a gift. Mr. Bennett had given me the wisdom he had lived with, a lesson that I promised never to forget.