Maybe It Just Doesn't Pay To Worry Too Much

Dear Rachel,

Last night I drove home in a blinding snowstorm—whiteout conditions most of the way, car sliding all over the road. When I turned on South Street to head home, I couldn’t even tell if it was really South Street.

It was a mess, and it reminded me of a telephone conversation we’d once had. You called while driving through a snowstorm in Virginia, mainly just to tell me how interesting it was to be driving in a snowstorm. Naturally, I was worried. You shouldn’t have been talking while driving, especially not in a snowstorm. (You knew that, of course, but you were 23 and indestructible.) I got you off the phone as quickly as I could and made you promise that you’d call me when you’d reached your destination.

You called 30 or 40 minutes later, but until I heard from you, I was terrified that you’d gotten in an accident.

We parents agonize about so many things. Will she get that report finished on time? Will she drop that jerk of a boyfriend and find somebody who treats her decently? Will she drink and drive? Or ride with someone who’s been drinking? Will she study for that test? Will she find a job? Will she quit that terrible job? Will she remember to call her mother? Her stepmother?

And on and on and on. There’s no end to it, even when the child becomes a young adult. The worries change, of course, but they don’t end.

I worried with the best of them, I’d say. But I worried about the wrong things. I never thought to worry that someone would someday put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. It just wasn’t something that occurred to me.

Sometimes it’s the things we forget to worry about that get us in the end. I wonder, is that something I should have thought of? Is there something I could have/should have done?

I guess that even though you’re gone, the worries continue.

Love,

Dad