Life as a Flowchart: Navigating the Ifs and If Nots

As we began the emotional task of winding up the apartment in New Jersey, we found ourselves sifting through the remnants of a life once filled with so much promise. Photos, letters, and countless documents needed to be sorted, and many things—like old hospital papers and expired medications—had to be discarded. In the midst of this process, I came across photos of Sana growing up in Fremont. She was such a happy baby, full of life and curiosity. Seeing those pictures brought a wave of memories, but also a new, unsettling thought: the “what ifs” and “if onlys.” For the first time, I found myself tangled in the web of what might have been. What if we had never moved from Fremont? What if she had never gone to New York? These questions have no answers, yet they linger, each one leading down a different path in the flowchart of life. Life has become a series of branching paths, each decision opening up a new set of possibilities and outcomes. The challenge is that unlike a true flowchart, where you can see where each choice leads, in life, we don’t get the luxury of seeing all the options laid out before us. We can’t retrace our steps or take a different route once a decision has been made. The outcomes of our choices remain unknown until they unfold, often in ways we could never predict. As I sat surrounded by these fragments of the past, I couldn’t help but wonder how different things might have been if we had made other choices. Would Sana still be here if we had taken another path? The uncertainty is overwhelming, and it’s easy to get lost in the endless loop of “if and if not.” But in reality, these questions, as haunting as they are, lead nowhere. They’re part of the grieving process, the mind’s way of trying to make sense of the senseless. We search for reasons, for explanations, but sometimes there simply aren’t any. Life’s flowchart is complex and unpredictable, with too many variables to ever fully understand. As we continue to pack up this apartment and sort through the memories, I’m reminded that life is less about the choices we make and more about how we live with them. The “ifs” and “if nots” are part of our journey, but they don’t define us. What matters is how we move forward, carrying the lessons of the past while making room for whatever comes next. In the end, we can only do our best with the choices before us, knowing that some questions will never be answered. Life’s flowchart may not always make sense, but it’s the path we’re on, and we have to keep moving forward, one step at a time.