Fr Tom Suriano - in his reflections at my mom’s funeral last Saturday - quoted the great line from T. S. Eliot's Four quartets, which I've heard him quote before: 'we had the experience but missed the meaning...'.
Here is the broader context from the poem -
It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence-
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness - not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfillment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination--
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness.***
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