What If

Years ago I read an article in the Readers' Digest about a little girl whose father had died and the family had to move away. I think the father was pastor of a church or parish which explains the move. She was unaccountably reluctant to leave and as her father's good friend tried to console her, she eventually confessed why: "What if he comes back?" If her father did come back, he would find his family gone and not know where they were. The father's friend hugged her tightly and assured her that he would tell the father their whereabouts if he did come back. But he said gently she did know, didn't she, that he was not coming back?

When my mother died, I was in my early 30s, a long way away from being a naive little girl. But I had that irrational hope just the same. In healthier times, my mother would rise early every morning to attend a prayer service at our church. A few weeks after she died, I wanted to do the same with the illogical, unfounded hope that somehow in the dark and early hours of the morning I would see her there, praying in church, and I could talk to her again. Needless to say, it didn't happen and I knew it wouldn't. There was just this tiny, mad part of me that hoped against hope...

I did continue attending the morning prayers for several years until I eventually tapered off. And among the regulars was this friendly, smiling woman who sometimes brought her pretty little granddaughter with her. Today I attended the funeral of the grandmother, now in her 80s, and the memory of those early mornings have brought on this requiem.