When we suddenly lose someone close to us, it’s hard not to think of the dreams they had and what they could have done if their lives were able to continue.
It feels like a grave injustice that we’ll never know, so our thoughts then turn to the time we were able to spend with them and the impact they made on our lives while they were here with us.
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And while those memories are precious, our feelings about them can become particularly complicated when the days that marked the end for our loved ones were supposed to serve as a new beginning.
That was the situation one California man faced over a year ago, but he’s since found a beautiful way to bring two of the most important people in his life as close as they can possibly be.
When Yesenia Aguilar was coming close to the end of her pregnancy, she and her husband James Alvarez decided to hold a maternity photo shoot.
But while a lot of couples have this idea as parenthood looms closer, both this special day and the park it took place in would take on a tragic significance in the year that followed.
On August 12, 2020, Aguilar was still pregnant when she was struck by an allegedly drunk driver.
As KTLA reported , her daughter Adalyn Rose would later be born by emergency cesarean section and spent the first moments of her life in critical condition.
But while Aguilar did not survive the incident, her daughter would pull through.
As Alvarez told Good Morning America, “I believe my daughter is a true definition of a miracle.”
So when Adalyn’s first birthday rolled around, it became a perfect opportunity to both celebrate her life and honor the memory of her mother.
To this end, he contacted photographer Grisel Leyva — who had conducted the maternity shoot — and returned to that park for the first time since Aguilar’s death for a very emotional day.
In Alvarez’s words, “It was just it kind of like, in a sense, like, she wasn’t gone. She was there with me.”
And as Adalyn grows up, Alvarez plans to give her the best possible sense of who her mom was.
And Good Morning America reported that he has saved a lot of her belongings — including her clothes and her makeup — for this purpose.
As he put it, “When my daughter is old enough to understand, I can show her all those beautiful items, memories, so she can kind of have an idea of who she was really was.”
h/t: Good Morning America
