Appreciation after loss

Posted by Smokey Stover on June 08, 2007

In Reply to: Appreciation after loss posted by R. Berg on June 08, 2007

: : : Is there a phrase/idiom that means something like: "only after you lose someone do you appreciate what they have done for you or how good they have been to you"?

: : How about the Joni Mitchell lyric, "Don't it always seem to go/ That you don't know what you've got/ Till it's gone"? (VSD)

: "You never miss the water till the well runs dry." That's an old one. ~rb

A college song in my tawdry repertory has the line: "a woman never knows what a good man she's got / until she lets him dow-ow-own."
SS