Grief’s Favorite Companion

"What If"

“What” and “If” are two words as non-threatening as words can be. But put them together side-by-side and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life: What… if?” - Letters to Juliet

It’s wild, isn’t it? How two of the simplest, most unassuming words in the English language can unravel you.

What. If. What if?

They’re just syllables. So simple. So harmless… until they’re not. Until they start crawling through your mind like a tornado you can’t outrun. Until they echo through your chest at 2 a.m., loud enough to drown out sleep, soft enough to sound like your own voice. Until they shape-shift into ghosts… ones that don’t knock, don’t ask permission. They just show up and sit heavy on your shoulders, whispering all the ways you might’ve saved them. All the things you could’ve done differently. Should’ve seen. Should’ve said. If only you’d shown up, if only you’d followed that gut feeling, if only you’d broken the silence. They don’t offer closure. Just echoes. Just the brutal kind of hindsight that keeps your heart wide open and bleeding.

Sometimes it’s the little what ifs that nibble at you but you aren’t sure why. The ones you can brush off during the day but feel late at night when your guard is down. They whisper and show up without warning.
What if I had spoken up? What if I had taken a different job? What if I hadn’t sent that text, or had actually answered the phone, or had just gone on that trip? What if I had gone instead of staying, spoken instead of swallowing it down, turned left instead of right? Tiny things. Small hinges. But we all know sometimes small things swing the biggest doors.

And then there are the other kind. The kind that don’t nibble, that take a chunk from your soul. The kind that don’t leave. The ones that live in your bones and change the way you breathe. The kind that hollow out your ribs and leave you gasping in silence. The kind that feel like anchors you’re forced to drag behind you, invisible but impossibly heavy.

What if I had gone to him that day? What if I hadn’t stayed out of it? What if I had listened to the voice I always had when it came to him, the one that just knew something was off, but this time I ignored it? What if I had ignored the advice to give space and instead barged in, heart first, and sat down beside him and forced him to stay? What if I hadn’t second-guessed myself?

What if I had gone with my mom instead of letting her go alone? What if I called the paramedics when she first got there, had them look her over despite her refusals? What if I had done just one thing differently that day, would it have changed anything? 

What if…

I don’t live in the past, but I visit it more than I ever admit out loud. Sometimes it welcomes me gently, wrapping around my shoulders like a soft quilt made of moments I’d give anything to relive. But other times, it comes for me with sharp edges, clawing at my skin, leaving marks only I know are there. Grief is twisted like that. It doesn’t follow a path or play fair. It loops, it spirals, it drags you back just when you thought you were finally catching your breath. And “what if” is its favorite companion.
I don’t think people fully grasp how heavy grief becomes when it’s tangled up with guilt. It’s not just sadness… it’s torment. It doesn’t arrive in clean stages or wrap itself up in some neat little timeline. It lingers. It loops. It sneaks in when you're just trying to survive a regular Tuesday and suddenly you're breathless, drowning in the memory of what you didn’t do. People mean well when they say things like, “You did your best,” or “You can’t think like that.” But I do think like that. Every. Damn. Day. Because I’m the one who has to live with the silence I didn’t break. With the gut feeling I ignored. With the moment I stayed back when I should’ve run. The people who say that usually haven’t lost someone in a way that makes you feel like you should’ve stopped it. Like maybe you could have. And the truth is, I can forgive a lot, sometimes too much when it comes to other people. But when it comes to forgiving myself for not showing up that day… I haven’t figured out how. Maybe I will someday. But right now, I still carry that version of me like a wound that won’t close. I live with the consequences of not showing up that day. I’ve found a way to forgive everyone around me for a lot of things… but when it comes to myself, I’m still standing in front of a locked door I’m not sure I even want to open. Because the truth is, I don’t know how to fully forgive myself for that day. And maybe, deep down, some part of me doesn’t think I should. This pain feels earned. Inevitable. Like a sentence I’ve accepted. Like maybe carrying it is the only way to honor the weight of what I didn’t do. Like a scar I’m meant to carry. Like penance.

The what ifs don’t let go. They cling like shadows, like ghosts that know my name. I used to fight them, used to beg them to leave me alone. But I don’t anymore. I think I’ve stopped expecting peace. They’ve become part of the terrain I walk now, part of the air I breathe. I carry them alongside the love that still pulses in my chest, alongside the memories I replay until they blur, alongside the ache that never really sleeps. Some days, the weight of it all makes it hard to stand. But maybe there’s a strange kind of grace buried in the wreckage. Maybe the haunting is its own kind of compass. A brutal, beautiful reminder to show up differently. To hold tighter. Speak louder. Love harder. Be braver. Because I know now how much one moment can matter. And how deep the silence can cut when it’s too late to fill it.

What ifs are a kind of grief in their own right. Not just grieving what you lost, but what you might’ve saved. What you might’ve changed. Who you might’ve still had. I don’t have answers. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. But I do know this, I have made peace with a lot of things in my life, but I will probably always carry the ache of the things I didn’t do. The words I didn’t say. The moments I didn't realize mattered so much until they were already gone. I have no wisdom that makes it easier. No silver lining big enough to cover the weight of regret. I just needed to say it out loud because silence is what got me here in the first place. I have to live with this pain. I live with the ways it steals your breath in the middle of a grocery store, how it sits beside you when the world keeps moving, how it convinces you you should’ve known better, done more, been different. I know what it’s like to scream into a pillow and still not feel any lighter.

And I know there’s no perfect way to move forward, not from this. But somehow, I still will. Not by forgetting, but by carrying it with more intention. One breath. One brutal truth. One slow, trembling day at a time. Maybe the what ifs never leave. Maybe they become part of us. But they don’t have to be the whole story. Maybe they carve us open so something softer can grow in the space where all that pain lives. Maybe they teach us to wake up, to show up, to love the people we still have like every second could be the last. Maybe that’s all we can do. And what if that’s enough.

Author’s Note:

Originally written March 9, 2020 - “Some nights, survival looks like surrender”.

I wrote this after a particularly long night. I couldn’t sleep, the ‘what if’s were screaming, and I didn’t have the strength to shut them out. So I let them in. I let them sit with me. I let them say what they needed to say, even when it felt like they were breaking something inside of me. They yelled in my face, clawed at my chest, pinned me down inside the madness I usually try to outrun.
Writing this was my way of surviving it. Of naming it. Of not going completely under. I think sometimes we expect healing to mean silence, peace, closure. But grief, especially when it’s tangled with guilt, doesn’t work like that. This piece came from the part of me that still aches for the chance to go back, even when I know I can’t. It came from the ache of loving someone so much it still changes how you breathe, years later.

Some truths don’t need answers, they just need a voice.

So if you’re reading this and you’re swimming in your own sea of what ifs… I see you. You’re not alone. You’re not crazy. You’re not broken. You’re just human. And maybe the best we can do is learn how to hold both the ache and the grace. The haunting and the healing. To let the “what ifs” remind us to live with more intention. More presence. More reckless, inconvenient, heart-wide-open love.

Because we don’t get to rewrite yesterday, no matter how hard we ache for a do-over.
We still have today.
We still get to shape these moments.
We can speak the words we once swallowed.
We can show up, unapologetically, heart-first.
We can choose to stop waiting for the perfect time and say the damn things now while we still can.