I'm back in the anger phase, but I'd hardly call them phases. It's just that now I feel angry again.
When I feel most angry, it usually has to do with the fact that Audrey has no father now.
why why why why why why why.
Today I watched her class and another at the playground before the end of school and noticed a father was cooping for the other class. The kids looked excited because it's usually moms that coop. I instantly pictured you doing this. Even if you'd had a day job, you would've taken a day off to do it- of this I am certain. You would've gotten to know all the kids and you would've talked trash about the bully in her class. I know which children you would've found particularly endearing as well. I see Audrey proudly smiling at you on the playground.
Then the illusion disappears. This will never be. I know I'm not supposed to think about the could'ves or should'ves. I know. But sometimes you can't help it. And even though the further time takes you away, the less close you are to what could've been...it still feels possible.
Tonight we measured Audrey on her growth chart and when I got it out, we stopped to look through a few other special tokens in the box where it's kept. There are a few drawings you did- there is a hat you bought her, and a few other gifts you got her. There are even three I haven't given her yet- that you'd gotten in May of 2010 - just shortly before you'd die. There is a little flute recorder, and colored pencils, and a mobile (even though she wasn't a baby you thought this one was cute...) and a candle with a metal carousel around it that moves when the candle is lit. I put these aside before she can see them. I imagine as she regrieves at older ages, it might be nice for her to get something "new" from you. But she seems enthralled with the other items, including a little jewelry bag you'd gotten from Korea. She grabs it and goes to her current jewelry box, taking out every last thing, and placing it in the bag. "I wish Appa could see me from heaven," she says. "I think he can," she adds. "I bet he can," I say. I do not know because I do not know if there is a heaven or if he is in it or if they can see us. None of that...is known.
But those moments, like today as I sit in the car watching that dad on the playground...I imagine how feasible my "should've" really is. Just a slight alteration of your path that day- just ever so slight- and the course of our entire lives would be different. Such a small, small margin got you there on that day...sometimes it is easier to believe it was meticulously planned than randomly accidental. Sometimes I think that Steven Hawking's multiverse theory applies to our lives and that somewhere in another universe, that other life we would've had- is still going on. I'm just stuck in the wrong universe.