it's easy to doubt

It's easy to replay the past in one's mind and wonder if you did everything you could.  It's easy to research what you might have done and question everything that happened because it doesn't match the perfect way.  It's easy to be critical when the results are a probability instead of a reality.  It's easy to beat yourself up and feel guilty about not doing enough or not doing something exactly right.  You will always be wrong.  Hindsight might be 20-20, but it shouldn't make you blind.

My training, my training has always told me to be critical, to question, to improve.  There is a fine line between critical study and guilt ridden regret.  The difference is the result.  Guilt is based on what could have been.  Study is about what you'll do next time.  It's a vital difference.

The difference between carrying a burdensome past or building a new future.

Today was a time to reflect on the weekend.  Was tricky to concentrate on work with a play by play re-looping in my mind.  I cried remembering my fear and doubt.  I cried remembering the sadness and my own helplessness.  

Then an email asking, should we have done more?

And the answer is always, "we did what we could do at the time we needed to do it."

How do you know?

Because someone is alive to hug his kids, hear his wife say I love you, and for him to reply, "I'm a very lucky guy." 

This is what really needs to replay in our minds.  This is the proof that we did something right, maybe not perfectly, maybe not exactly the way it should have been, but that doesn't matter.  Hugs matter. I love you matters.  Being alive to experience those things matters.