we look back, but not 

forward - would we change the past

if only we knew?

It's been a long week.  My friend's daughter died and this weekend was the celebration of life.  As I spent time looking at her photos and reflecting back on the last 3 decades - I wondered if we would choose to have kids, if we knew what was coming.

Does that sound awful?

Or would we do things differently - knowing now, years later, what moments defined them, and their relationships to us and to others?  Would I have stepped in, or not, knowing what I know now?

I think of one such incident.  It shaped us all - and there were warning signs along the way that I didn't know how to handle or identify, or wrote off either in ignorance or laziness.  I'm almost fifty now - and looking back over time, I see how incidents and moments bore out over time.  Some not nearly as tragic as I might have guessed.  Others, seemingly nothing at the time, causing ripples of trouble over numerous years.

As I sat in the garden yesterday and looked at my friend's daughter's fountain and wondered how a mother carries on after losing her child, I also wondered how we bare the weight of such responsibility.