Nevertheless : Morals of Regret, Closure, and Self-Empathy in Later Life

This article examines the psychosocial challenges of later life through the lens of poetry, highlighting maladaptive regret, the pursuit of unattainable closure, and diminished self-empathy. Drawing on gerontological research, it explores how older adults face cumulative adversities-bereavement, functional decline, estrangement, unrealized aspirations, and moral injury-often without sufficient structural or clinical support. The poem's refrain "Nevertheless" underscores persistent human striving despite epistemic limits, emotional incompleteness, and empathic constraints, emphasizing the importance of ongoing meaning-making rather than expecting ideals such as clear closure. The poem also serves as a call to action: practitioners should normalize ambiguity and unfinished narratives, expand interventions targeting maladaptive outcomes, and foster age-enabling, if not age-elevating, environments that cultivate resilience, empathy, and intergenerational support. After all, while we struggle in prose, we can, nevertheless, strive in poetry.