Whatifitis

This morning- Madi’s 15th birthday- I woke with the familiar weight of grief pressing down on me.  I laid in bed, immobilized by it, alternating between looking at pictures and videos of Madi and just staring at the wall, crying.  Kurt, my kids, my mom, my sister, my nieces and nephews all tried to get me out of bed.  I couldn’t move.  It hurt so much.  I couldn’t do anything except cry and wonder all the what ifs all over again.  

Somewhere in between the raw pain of watching a loved one pass from this life and the oppressive sadness of trying to heal from the trauma is an empty space. The perpetual motion of life continually fills the space whether we want it filled or not.  My space has been host to many things in the 2 ½ years since we lost our kids.  But perhaps the most debilitating of all them is what I now call, “whatifitis.”  After having met and gotten to know many people who are mourning a lost loved one, I am convinced now that this is part of the grieving process. We seem to go through a period of asking, “what if?”  Specific or general, it doesn’t matter. The end result is always the same, “What if things had been different?”  I call it whatifitis because if left untreated, this little sickness can destroy a person with a finality that rivals death itself.   

My own whatifitis induced doubts about how we had handled the situation with Madi.  What if we had found the tumor sooner?  Would it have bought us more time with her?  What if we had recognized her little headaches as more than something benign and gotten an MRI after the cancer had just taken root?  Going back even farther, what if something environmental caused the cancer?  What if that house we lived in when she was little made her sick?  What if we had moved sooner? What if everything she experienced really had been in our control and we could have managed our way out through detox or supplements or diet changes or juicing or strict lifestyle regimens or jumping on the trampoline or increasing water intake?  With Frederick, what if something I ate or put on my body affected his development?  What if I had changed A,B, or C?  Would he be a healthy normal 2 ½ year old right now?  What if I had just gotten a C-section when we saw his heart-rate was dropping?  Would that have bought me more time with him or just sped up the process of losing him?  And then there are the emotional what ifs.  What if I had not spent enough time with Madi? What if I had not gotten my Master’s while she was a baby- would I feel better now having all those hours of study and class time with her instead?  Would I feel less sad that she was gone?  What if I had spent more time imparting truths and knowledge to her that I had hoped she would accumulate over a very long life?  What if I didn’t hug her enough?  Tell her enough I loved her?  What if, what if, what if…. Now push fast forward and add about a million more questions and you’ll get a good idea of how my whatifitis felt. 

I found myself engulfed in what ifs every day for a very long time.  Sometimes I could distract myself, but whenever that quiet emptiness opened up, the endless questions would come and beat me down into agony.  Perhaps you have gone through this or had similar questions about someone who has experienced a tragedy. Every question seems to trail off at the end with the unspoken...everything would be better now if only I could fix the what ifs….

I think it was several months after Madi and Frederick died before I realized how sick whatifitis was making me.  I felt tortured, desperate for relief.  My therapist pointed out one day that the what-ifs are endless.  There is no way to get past them.  Even if I could go back and fix everything I felt had gone wrong, I would find - like every go-back-in-time movie shows- that there would be a whole new crop of what ifs to take their place.  I realized that the heart of whatifitis was my unwillingness to recognize how little control I had over life.  No matter how much I try to hamster-wheel my way through avoiding any kind of possible calamity, ultimately I am at the mercy of mortality. I will eventually succumb to its bitter end. Knowing this and accepting this are two very different things.  

One of my friends who had also lost a baby not long after I had told me that she used the what ifs as a reminder that she needed to remember all the “I’m so glads.”  Whenever she had the thoughts, she would take a few minutes to slow down and remember her son and everything she loved about him.  Just like a fever is an indicator that something is wrong in our physical body, she took the fever of whatifitis to be an indicator that she needed to slow down and let her body grieve and be still for a few minutes.  And heal. This helped me immensely. 

I also started imagining death as a person (who in my apparently gender-biased mind was a man). I always saw myself in a rocking chair on the front porch of a house in Indiana (where I grew up).  When I saw Death walking around, instead of running to hide, I pulled my tired body off my front-porch chair and started walking with him.  He seemed happy to have company, and I felt relief as we walked with my hands tucked into my front pockets. On my walks with Death, I find I am growing in respect for him and what he allows me to feel. He is so very wise with a wickedly dry and honest humor, though he doesn’t speak much.  I think that’s less because he has nothing to say and more because he only speaks when asked questions. I find myself enjoying the familiarity our walks provide me.  

So this morning as my mind started spiraling down toward whatifitis again, I decided to stop and take a stroll with my good friend, Death. I asked him questions like, “What would Madi be like at age 15?”  And he gave me some shrewd and hilarious observations.  I asked him how life after death shapes a person, and how often those who have passed on can see those they love on earth. I asked him if they think about their deaths the way we do, if they remember what it felt like to die, if it sticks with them the way it sticks with us. We walked and talked and I cried and laughed and then it was time to say good-bye to him.  I imagine I will still see him in the distance for the rest of the day, walking around.  It’s ok.  While our time together staves off the whatifitis, too many walks with Death can make me forget about the life I have left to live.  

Happy Birthday to my sweet and beloved Madi!  She would have rocked this world had she stayed, but has likely rocked the next world already.  Always a step ahead, she was… And while I’m still starving for the feeling of her cheek on mine or her arms hugging me the way she used to do, I am feeling awfully grateful for the beauty she’s left in her wake.  I’m grateful she introduced me to Death, even though it took me a long time to appreciate him.  I hope in some capacity, she is celebrating with us today.