Since I saw D last month, I have been grieving Matt’s suicide again. I don’t really have the time or the privacy to really immerse myself in it, but I have been taking small chunks of time here and there to think and cry.

When I went on my car trip this weekend, I took a handful of mix tapes (ah, mix tapes) that Matt made for me before he left for the army. I don’t remember ever listening to those tapes after Matt died. When I was in the thick of those first years of grief, it would have been too much. I just packed them away and didn’t think much of them until I was sorting through things before I went to see D.

I dusted them off and listened to them again while I was alone in my car with 8 hours to think. With the first chord of the first song, I started crying. Even now, it is a little overwhelming.

Ever since D told me she thought Matt would have married me if he could have, I have been tiptoeing around that idea. With 8 hours to think about it, I realized I really, really want that life. I want the life I could have had with Matt.

I want to know what it would have been like.  I want to know who my children would have been and what they would have looked like.  I want Matt to be the amazing father he would have been to the red curly-haired daughter I always imagined we would have.  I want D to be my sister-in-law. I want to know where we would have lived. I want Matt to grow old with me.

I want these things so much, it feels like my chest could explode with the longing. I want a do-over. I want a life without losing Matt. I want a life where he got better and was happy.

At the same time, I love the life I have.  I love Mr. A.  He isn’t a 2nd choice husband, he is seriously the most perfect person to spend my life with.  I love our children and I can’t imagine any other children in their place.  I love our life and our family with every single fiber of my being. I am unbelievably happy with my life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

So how can it be that I want them both?  I couldn’t have one if I have the other.  But I do want them both.  I know it is crazy.  I want the Now and I want the What Might Have Been.

I know that the life I have is my only real option, but that doesn’t lessen the longing for the other life. Right now, I am letting myself soak in that longing for a bit before I box it up and put it on a shelf deep down in my heart again.

I think this terrible Sophie’s choice of desires is good for me, even though it sucks.  If I weren’t experiencing it, I don’t think I could really understand the complete and total longing for different lives.

I think it might be, in some small way, how L might one day feel about losing her birth family and her life in China. In all of this hurting for me and the loss of my own What Might Have Been, I can see more clearly how it might hurt for her.

And not only does it hurt, it keeps coming back years and years later. With the passage of time, the pain isn’t really any less.

It sucks.  It really, really sucks.