What if...

As I walk out of the church, everything sets in. The tears at the back of my eyes come forth and mess up my face, contorting it. But I keep it in.

I am holding a teddy bear that means so much but yet so little. It's not so much a teddy bear as what I like to call an angel bear.

Driving to the cemetery, I think. I think of the unimportant like... What if I ripped my blue floral dress? What if I kissed the boy with the bread? What if we were all Barbies in a playhouse being controlled by some little girl?

During my "what if" frenzy, we get to the grave site. It's 5 miles from town with the little white church. All around me are familiar faces left to right. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and even siblings, all of these people come from both sides of the family including a bunch of family friends. The committal service was starting and everyone turned to the tent. The pastor would go on and on saying stuff like: "This man lead a beautiful life", "We will miss him dearly", "He was a great man", etc. It was the norm but it didn't feel like it. It didn't feel like a normal funeral. I pondered this a bit more then I came up with another what if:

What if my dad never died?