Sometimes when I’m missing Alana, I listen to the Script song “If You Ever Come Back.” I don’t believe in zombies or wish to attract ghosts, but I imagine what it would feel like if Alana Concetta walked in the door one day. Even though there have been so many milestones since her death, some silly like she would be pissed to have missed the Sons of Anarchy finale or at least Bobby’s death, and some I avoid thinking about, like how fiercely she would love her two nieces.

And what she would have been like as a mother.

When the song says, “I wish you could still give me a hard time,” I first thought it said “I wish you could give me a high five” which is a hearing impaired person’s inadvertent substitution. Our minds make up what our ears can’t hear. Still a high five would be more appropriate. Alana giving you a hard time was not a pleasant experience.

It’s strange how you can know someone is dead, either cremated or decomposing in the ground, and you could still imagine a situation where they could walk in the door and surprise you.

Unfortunately though the key might be in the same place, and the kettle on, life moves on. The longer someone has been dead the more jarring I imagine the experience would be. Imagine coming back never knowing smart phones, cable television, the internet, self-driving cars, Twitter, and a host of other technological and societal changes. It would be disorienting to say the least.

So though I like to think about Alana coming back, I know the world today is not the world she left. Wanting her back is selfish on my part.  She’s moved on.

I’d still like to hug her one more time and have, at least for a moment, the feeling that she had never gone.  Too bad that only happens in fantasies and songs.