This past week a neighbor lost her 36 year old daughter to a diabetic complication.  As we all do,  she is experiencing anger.  We want to blame something or someone for this terrible injustice.  She believes that if our current times were different, she would have been visiting her daughter more and would have been able to support her better, avoiding this outcome.  It is the beginning of her ‘what ifs’.

My ‘what ifs’ with Zane are long and complicated. What if I had listened to his fears more?  What if I had insisted he not go out? What if he had stayed there a little longer? What if I had sent him to school away from here? What if….and each time a ‘what if’ comes up, it brings with it a gut wrenching agony. 

 ‘What ifs’ are about examining what control we might have had and why we didn’t exercise it then that we might not be here now.  ‘What ifs’ are all about how things might have turned out differently.  The problem with ‘what ifs’ is that they can’t be answered. We don’t know.  We will never know. So the possible outcomes of the ‘what ifs’ only create regrets or exaggerate a regret we already had.  And regrets complicate grief.

So how do we stop the ‘what if’ scenarios that play over and over again?  I believe you can’t and I also believe that sometimes facing the pain of the ‘what ifs’ can bring a little healing.

Some ‘what ifs’ we face are about things we couldn’t control in the first place.  What if I had insisted he not go out?  He was 26; he would have called me cute and told me he was going. By facing this ‘what if’ and understanding this was never in my control, I can let it go.  I am so sad that he chose to go out that night, but why shouldn’t he have?  He was enjoying a beautiful night with a beautiful friend. If they hadn’t been killed, I would have wanted this night to happen for him.  There would have been no ‘what if’.

What if I had sent him to school?  I don’t know his life plan.  This ‘what if’ understanding is powerful.  Only God knows the plan and thus many of our ‘what ifs’ are known by God, the Universe, whatever your higher power belief is. So a bigger picture is in place; one that we don’t see or understand in our grief.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

I try not to soak in the ‘what ifs’ because there are no answers. If I do go there, I ask myself, do I know for certain that ‘what if’ would have kept him alive?  No.  My ego may think it can, but the truth is, I will never know. So I shift my thinking to what I do know. I think of all the things I did do, we did have and my mind begins to move on to more pleasant memories of our life together.