The year that wasn't --- or why 'if' is a big word

No one got shot at Columbine High School. The President of the United States was never impeached, and we don't recognize the name "Monica Lewinsky." John F. Kennedy Jr., attended his cousin Rory's wedding at Martha's Vineyard in July and is back at work in his George magazine offices.

Isn't this a pretty picture? Too bad it isn't the year that was.

In the last days of December, we always take a look back. Magazines issue their "Year in Review" editions, ranking the significant events and people of the last twelve months. Because this December is the last of the 1900s, the fury is especially keen, with the media identifying the movers and shakers of the entire century. While I write this, a "Special Moments of the Millennium" Kodak commercial appears on my television.

As I look back over 1999, I'm tempted to see the year not as it was, but as I wish it had been: JFK, Jr. and the Bessette sisters alive, the Columbine victims anticipating the usual high school milestones, the Flight 990 passengers safely transported to Egypt, King Hussein still brokering peace in the Middle East, those Philadelphia firefighters all safe and enjoying the holidays with their families, Hurricane Floyd dissipated at sea.

We can view the entire century through this same lens: first, of course, no Holocaust. In fact, no World War I. Or II. No Korea or Vietnam, no Cold War, no Mussolini or Stalin or Idi Amin or Ayatollah Khomeini or Adolph Hitler or Augusto Pinochet or Pol Pot. No military coups or "ethnic cleansing." No natural disasters or economic collapses. No serial killers: no Manson, Bundy, Dahmer. No bomb in Olympic Park or Oklahoma City. No influenza epidemic. No polio. No AIDS.

Of course, all our disasters are not in the public arena. Looking back through the wishing lens, we also see, in our own families and friends, heart attacks and cancers avoided, accidents and miscarriages averted, marriages saved, children unmolested, jobs gotten or kept. Who among us could NOT find a use for the magic wand that could change the past?

But we CAN'T change the past. Most of us learn that lesson far younger than we'd like to. We cannot draw any conclusions from wishful premises. If that driver just hadn't been drinking . . . if Uncle Floyd hadn't smoked all those cigarettes . . . if Mom hadn't had that stroke . . . if there'd been a security guard at that door . . . Finishing those sentences might temporarily make us feel better, but they won't get us anywhere -- except as we use them to make our own lives better, safer, healthier.

Based on the disappointments and disasters of the past, we formulate resolutions. We'll stop smoking, make the kids buckle up, stick up for ourselves, eat more green vegetables and less meat, get more exercise, read more books, call our parents or children more often.

We can't change the past. We CAN, with the love of our families and friends, with little unexpected bursts of strength, and with a little luck, find ways to get past the change.