What If?

This weekend Karl would have turned 37. I found myself thinking about what we would be doing if he were here. Just before he turned 35, he joked with me that he was already 40, really, because anything over 30 was old. I could tell, tho, that it did bother him a little that now his age would actually round up rather than down.

Of course, as it turned out he didn't make it to 40, so never had to cross that bridge. Alas.

Anyway, thinking about the what ifs always leads me to the same thing, and it's something that continues to eat at me. Tonight I think I realized why.

Most of the "what if" scenarios that come into my mind are so abstract as to be meaningless - if I'd been home, if he'd had to pick Elliot up, if everybody hadn't been out of town, if he'd stayed in Hermann, if he'd not been such a heavy drinker, if his mom had been younger when he was born, if i'd called my mom after we talked... seriously, I've considered a million possibilities that might have changed things, but none are what should have happened, only what might have.

But the one that really gets me is different - a mar in the smooth surface of understanding. Tonight I realized it's because it isn't a "What if?" as much as it is an unknown - a "What happened?"

I don't blame anyone for Karl's death. It happened, and it's crap that it did, but I don't feel like it's somebody's fault.

Except maybe I do. I think there was one person who might have, and possibly should have, prevented it. What I don't know is what, if anything, actually happened between them that day. There are people I could ask, but I risk burning bridges, because I don't know how to ask without sounding accusatory.

I can still hear him in my mind, and the words are clear: "I talked to the school nurse before I left, and she assured me I wasn't having a heart attack."

But he was, and he did, and he died.

How do I let that go? It's so impossible, because I knew Karl, and it's equally likely that he convinced her that he was fine, as she convinced him. Or that he withheld symptoms. Or that he didn't really talk to her but knew what I would need to hear to feel like he was ok. Or that she suggested he call his doctor, but he heard "call him sometime" when she meant "call him NOW."

Or any number of things that might have passed between them.

But I don't know, because nobody has ever told me anything, and I'm afraid to ask because at the moment, I'm not angry. But what if I did ask? Maybe it's just a thin veneer of calm. Maybe it's chaos underneath, and so I'm afraid to scratch at it, to reveal the real structure of my understanding. Still, here I am picking at it; bothering, stirring...

I still wish I would wake up and he would be here, and it would all be a bad dream. In the past 18 months I've learned so much and grown so much, and I have an amazing life, but it's such awful price to have paid.

I think my life is bigger now, but so too is the hole he left. They grow together - the wonder and beauty in my life magnify his absence, because he should be here to share them.

If only...