When You Return

This post may strike you as strange, but I wonder about it now and then, andI suspect that you do, too. The what ifs.

Two years after Evelyn died, I finally accepted the reality that she wasn’t coming back. Those of you who have lost people are nodding your heads. You understand. Everyone else is probably thinking, “It’s about time.”

I stopped expecting to see Ev come home after teaching, or working at her desk, cooking in the kitchen, or smiling in bed when I woke up. I stopped hoping that it was all a nightmare, that the doctor had made a mistake and she wasn’t dead. She had just been misplaced.

(photo first published in Modern Loss, http://modernloss.com/day-lovers-without-mine/)

            Reluctantly, I began to create a new life. Now, years later, I wonder what would have happened if she had come back.

                        *

            If Ev had returned during the first three years, not much would have changed. I lived in the same house, did the same job, and had the same schedule of activities. She could have stepped right back in and we would have continued from there for the next 40 years as planned.

            And yet, she may not have been thrilled to come back if she had to add rehab for her heart problem to the work she had to do for her other physical ailments. She was already struggling with aches and pains that wouldn’t go away. If her heart situation was going to add on more work, then she might not have wanted to come back.

                        *

            After three years, everything began to change. Her mother died, four of our closest friends relocated from the Bay Area to L.A, and I was leaning toward moving to a cabin in the mountains and living out the rest of my days there. Then I fell in love, remarried, and moved to another state. It would be hard to have two wives. Over the years she’s been gone, I’ve learned a great deal about myself and life because of grief. I’m more comfortable with my emotions and I have more compassion for the suffering of others.

            What if Evelyn came forward into my present? She would love to experience my emotional changes because she had worked hard with me to share more of them. And if she brought with her all of the insights that she had gained from being in the netherworld, then we could have some dandy conversations. At the beginning of grief, I compiled a list of questions I wanted to ask, but now I realize that the answers really don’t matter.

                        *

            A third scenario. What if Evelyn had survived and I had the chance to go back in time from where I am now? With everything that I’ve done since then, all the ways that I have grown, would I want to go back if I had to lose all this? 

            If we can dream the future into reality, can we dream reality into our past? 

Related Post

Listening in Grief's Woods http://widowersgrief.blogspot.com/2010/07/listening-in-quiet-woods.html