Day 20 ~ Nostalgia

A week ago a friend gave birth. Today I asked how things were going. It brought me back to the times when I was a new mom. I loved everything surrounding it. Aside from the initial nausea, I had a very pleasant pregnancy. I delivered a boy in four hours through the natural birth I wanted. Despite two dozen mastitides, I fulfilled my wish to breastfeed him for as long as he wanted (almost three years). My husband and I cherished every moment spent with our baby, aware of the privilege life had given us. We were the luckiest parents: one playing with him, the other watching and taking photographs. Magical. The day he turned two years and four months exactly, the magic broke. His dad was admitted to the hospital for a simple medical procedure that ultimately led to his death three weeks later. I have worked on grief through the years and made it to the other side, but there is always a seed of pain, and it is the nostalgia of my son's first years of life. I used to say that the day I can look at his baby things and be sure not to cry, that day I will be completely healed. For now I know it is just safer not to look. And when nostalgia knocks uninvited, I walk it gently through me, until it eases off.