Overcoming ‘What Ifs’ After Loss: A Personal Journey

Can I ask you something?

After loss, what were the what ifs that kept replaying in your mind?

There were a lot of what ifs in my journey.

What if I had noticed something sooner?
What if I had said something different that day?
What if I had pushed harder for them to see a doctor?
What if I had just done one thing differently?
What if I had called that day?
What if I had stopped by?

Grief has a way of turning your mind into a courtroom where every decision suddenly feels like evidence. You replay moments over and over, wondering if one small choice could have changed everything.

And honestly, I have yet to meet someone who hasn’t had at least one.

Because even in everyday life, aren’t there regrets?

We regret not waking up earlier when we’re late for work.
We regret decisions as small as what to wear or what to eat.
We go down that familiar road of I should have… I could have… I would have…

Sometimes we even wish for a redo.

A chance to do something over.
To make a different choice and hope for a different outcome.

Because regret is part of being human.

But the regrets that show up after loss?

Those can be overwhelming.

After my husband passed, my mind replayed that morning over and over again. If you’ve lived through loss, you may recognize that feeling — the mind going back through moments again and again, searching for something you might have missed.

What if I had stayed up longer?
Would I have noticed something sooner?

Probably not.

What if I had pushed harder for him to go to the doctor?

Would the outcome have been different?

Maybe.
Maybe not.

My mind filled with every possible scenario where one small decision might have changed everything.

And I was hard on myself.

Really hard.

For a long time, I carried the weight of those questions as if the answers were mine to control.

Looking back now, I realize something.

Maybe I was trying to make reason out of something that had no reason.

And I later learned that this isn’t just something I experienced — it’s something many grieving minds do.

Grief writer Megan Devine explains it this way:

“The mind looks for causes because it believes that if it can find the cause, it can prevent the pain from happening again.”

Grief expert David Kessler has also spoken about how the mind searches for meaning after loss, trying to understand what happened and why.

In other words, those what ifs are often the mind’s attempt to restore order to something that shattered it.

And if you’ve had those thoughts too, I want you to hear this clearly.

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “what if,” this part matters.

Those questions do not mean you loved them any less.
They do not mean you failed them.
And they certainly do not mean you are being disrespectful to the relationship you had.

In many ways, those questions come from love.
When someone matters deeply to us, our minds naturally search for ways we might have protected them.

They mean you are human.

When someone we love dies, our minds do what minds naturally do — they try to make sense of something that feels impossible to accept.

And learning that helped me begin loosening the grip those questions had on me.

Everything I did that morning was everything I had in me to give.

I was meticulous in his care.
I asked the right questions.
I stood by his side the best way I knew how.

Could a nurse have noticed something different?

Maybe.

But I wasn’t a nurse. I was a wife.

And at some point, I had to learn to give myself grace.

Soon I realized I had begun to give myself grace.

Grace.

Grace for the woman who did the best she could with what she knew at the time.
Grace for the decisions made in moments none of us are prepared for.
Grace for the questions that may never have answers.

And sometimes that grace shows up in the smallest, unexpected ways.

Every time I hear an ambulance now, my mind still goes back to that day — to the moments when nothing we did seemed to work.

But instead of staying in that moment, I say a quiet prayer for the person inside.

I pray their story ends differently than mine.

In a way, it feels like praying forward — hoping that someone else will be given more time, hopefully a different ending.

That small prayer has become a way of giving hope to someone else. And strangely enough, it helps me embrace the grace I’ve given myself.

A Moment to Reflect

Before you move on, sit with this for a moment.

Have you ever found yourself trapped in the what ifs after a loss?

What helped you begin letting go of those questions?

If something helped steady you, consider sharing it. Someone else walking this road might need to hear it too.

I am here beside you.