what if

I'm just finishing An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken. It's a memoir, mostly about her first child, stillborn. Her writing is clear and lovely, and I value the grief in it, still looking for understanding in my own. She writes of her second child, still a baby, whose "job is to be Gus. In this he more than pulls his weight":

He has cured me, mostly, of blame and what might have been, all of that fairy-tale bargaining: what would you do differently and what if. I know my fairy tales. Those bargains are disastrous: you ask for what you want, and then your words get twisted. Terrible things happen. it's never so easy as a wish...generally my door is barred to all bargaining apparitions.