I sometimes get a painful case of nostalgia, but I feel like I need to keep telling my son of my memories of my mother and this is hard for me. The mother I knew lives only in the past. Although she is still alive physically, she is nothing like the mother I knew. The day she had surgery she was suddenly left with only some memories of the past and very little short term memory, about 30 seconds worth, so she could never learn another thing for the rest of her life even though learning was her passion. So in a way, it was like she had died. She was such a wonderful mom and my son was only 4 when this happened to her so I want to keep reminding him what she was like before the brain injury.
I keep a picture of her and my son at his 4th birthday party, when she was still very alive mentally. I can't put it away.
I also can't put away the picture of my son on his first day of Kindergarten, the day he read out loud and followed the instructions on the paper the teacher gave us, an instruction list that was written for the adults to read when we walked into the room. In the picture he was happy and smiling and so looking forward to going to school with other kids to learn. He was the only child at home and had not gone to preschool and he wanted to go to school with other kids like him. This was before we knew there were no other kids like him at the school. It was before we knew that the real focus would be on making him more like the other kids and making him color in the lines and that I would need to homeschool or put him in a private school that we couldn't afford. It was before I knew that smart kids were bullied for being smart or different and teachers ignored the problem.
