If Things Had Been Different

Dearest Rachel –

To a certain extent, I suspect you might be the slightest bit disappointed in me. With the new church tradition of holding separate women’s and men’s weekend retreats at the camp, I’m sure that you would enthusiastically embrace the former and strongly encourage me (and Daniel, I shouldn’t wonder) to go up for the latter. Yet here the two of us are, hanging around down here, wondering if they managed to completely book the place out or not while we decided (actively on my part, most likely not giving it so much as a second thought on Daniel’s) to stay home.

To be fair, since the women’s one completely sold out, it was rather assumed that the men’s one would do likewise. After all, they’d been plugging it for just as long, and with two weeks’ extra lead time. And it isn’t as if there wasn’t plenty of enthusiasm for it; indeed, most of the men at the study that would have happened any other Saturday morning were planning to go, to the point where I’m essentially at liberty today in a way that I’m almost unaccustomed to. So I concluded that, given the fact that I’m not the camper or outdoorsperson you were, the slot I would otherwise fill up there would be better used and appreciated by somebody else – and if it was someone who needed to hear the messages being taught up there, so much the better. My absence could just as easily make the difference in some soul’s eternity, although that would be a story I’d never know about.

Besides, there were and are still duties that need taking care of back here on the home front; with all the men who are otherwise active in church up there, who’s going to be handling the sound, the lights or the music on Sunday? You might have considered it flimsy – and not without reason – but it was justification all the same.

But as the final week before the event wore on, it was becoming more and more clear that there were still slots open, even as time to sign up was running out. Maybe there was less enthusiasm about the event than the circles I travel in might have suggested. Maybe there were a larger number of guys who decided to spend their nights off-camp at local hotels (although I’ve no idea where there are any such places nearby), thus freeing up cabin space, which is basically the one main reason to even have an attendance cut-off in the first place.

For my part, I’ve no idea. I’d made my decision long before, and was already committed to my duties down here; whatever I might be missing out on was outweighed (at least, in my mind) by the obligations down her I’d already agreed to. I also have family commitments this weekend that I told you about yesterday, although you would be well within your rights to point out that I could just stay until Saturday evening and drive home late at night in order to make those latter appointments. After all, I had done that very thing the night you had to leave.

But what if things had been different?

***

I suppose it shouldn’t come as any great surprise to you that I will occasionally wonder how different things would be if you hadn’t taken “just one more run” down that hill that afternoon. What might be surprising are the conclusions I come to regarding what would and wouldn’t change between that reality and the one we’re left to deal with.

Take last night, just as an example. It might very well be that you and the girls would have gotten together as a foursome at the Woodfield food court, in very much the same way that the six of us did last night; Erin would probably have had the same obligation to shop at the Lego store that essentially resulted in us (you all?) choosing the mall as an assembly venue in either event. Ellen’s job, since she started it about a year before the accident (and a month before the pandemic started) would have made no difference to the scheduling, while I think you would have encouraged Kerstin to take the same assignment in Beloit she’s doing these days. So, apart from your presence, life for the four of you would be the same as it is today, at least in that instant.

However, there are also changes. Of course, I’ve already pointed out that you would have encouraged Daniel and I to go up to camp this weekend; ironically, I would know fewer of the guys there, because I wouldn’t have been part of the Saturday morning Bible study, since I would generally have what I considered better things to do with my time (and I hope you would agree with me about that, honey) – indeed, I might not even have been aware of the study’s existence. Erin might not be training for the marathon; while she told me she had been waiting for a push when I challenged her to join me in training for it a couple years ago (and she took to it so much better than I did), whether she would have received a different push that compelled her toward that community from somewhere else is… debatable. And Logan, while possibly still a friend of Daniel’s, would likely be as distant to him as any others from Harper or Judson – which is to say, virtually out of his life entirely.

And just think; these are just the most surface-level differences visible in this little, momentary snapshot. So many other things have changed in less than a thousand days. My relationship with Lars – and the weight-loss regimen he’s been monitoring even as we discuss so many other things – the cleaning and remodeling of the house, the experiments with artificial intelligence… basically, so much of what I’ve been writing to you about, including the very fact that I’ve been writing to you in the first place, would not be a part of my life if you were still here. Some of these might even be considered good things, but there’s no way I’d claim they were worth having to let you go.

And on the other hand, I’ve no idea of the changes and improvements that might have happened with you still here, since I don’t (and can’t) live in that timeline. I could only guess what it might have been like to go through your family’s old photos, just as an example, and have some context as to when they were taken and what was going on at the time. Maybe I’d have run some of your old photos through one of those MidJourney type programs even without you being gone; it would have been fun to get your opinion on this or that fake image of yourself. Maybe we’d have discussed the implications of that episode of Black Mirror I’ve since written you about – in fact, you’d have probably been the one bringing it to my attention, most likely – and whether that would have been a worthwhile concept, given the time and technology.

As it is, I’m stuck with these one-sided discussions, where I can’t quite divine your opinions on such things, and have to parse them for myself. I’d like to think you’d be pleased with how things are going (apart from what happened to all your stuff), but I can only guess. And as the timeline stretches out farther with each passing day, those changes get more and more divergent from where we were and might have been, making it that much more difficult to determine; not that there’s really any profit in that form of speculation, I suppose. Best to live as well as possible in the timeline I’m relegated to, and not dwell too much on what the other one might have looked like, eh?

Anyway, I’ll keep in touch, honey. Until then, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.