Romanticize Austin... I now can!

As an English teacher, we have come to the unit of Romanticism, and I couldn't help but validate my initial feelings I felt the first couple of months after Austin's death. How does the idea of romanticism and romanticize come into play when talking about Austin? Well, I would have never thought the ideas would have connected; however, after this whole experience, I feel like you can pretty much connect anything in life to your own situation, every song, every movie, every television show, but that could be a whole other post.

Anyway, when we really looked into what the word romanticize meant, we came to a very different meaning than what most would think. Initially when you hear the word romanticize, you think of happy things: flowers, romance, love, etc; however, to truly romanticize something is to glorify something, and almost make it better than it really is. For instance, we often romanticize the good parts of our lives when we look back in nostalgia on the "good, old days," and forget the hard parts of those days or any difficulties we may have encountered. Instead, we make those days sound a lot better than they were.

With that explanation in mind, I realize that is why I had such a difficult time dealing with my emotions in that the few months following Austin's death, I wasn't able to "romanticize" or "glorify" Austin's extremely short life because of all the horror and trauma I experienced. While everyone else close to me was able to look at the day as a blessing, or a miracle, or Austin as an angel, I couldn't get past the part that it was awful and I lost something so special to me that day because of all the blood and trauma that had occurred. While I was able to see some positives in that day right away, I still wasn't able to make it a beautiful moment or even think of Austin as a beautiful baby. As a result, I have felt such guilt for not having that initial "loving" feeling toward him. I wasn't able to look at his brief birth as my son; I was ashamed and just wanted to block this whole situation out of my mind.

As the months have gone on, I now feel like I have come to a new place in my journey. I miss Austin~ I sometimes just wish I could have held him longer, or wasn't so "weirded" out on the day he was born. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so numb in the hospital, and I wasn't so relieved for my life to be spared. I am thankful that now I can think about Austin and not have all the negative thoughts come into my mind. When I look at his picture now, I can see the beauty in his face.... and as I was driving home from work today, the words of Beyonce resonate in me, as this whole experience was by far a "sweet dream," but I feel like I can now look at it as more of a beautiful nightmare. While I will never be able to romanticize the experience, I do feel like I have moved to a place where I can glorify Austin and remember the peaceful image of him sleeping that will forever remain in my heart.

(I told you that almost any song or story can be related to this experience... )