I believe that we always reach an age in which, more than being concerned with the future, we look at the past with nostalgia and a desire to return to it. Perhaps not to change anything, but to live again what was lived and made us so happy.
Without a doubt, I would love to go back and relive many of the experiences I had when everything I was and had was enough. Because I would not only want to return to a time or a place, but also to a mental state in which I believed that the people I loved would be eternal.
Along the way, more than material things, I have lost loved ones whom I miss and would like to see again, once more, as before. I would love to go back to the past where they were, perhaps not to give them more love, which I know I gave them in abundance, but to listen to them, to hug them, to look at them so that time does not begin to blur them in my memory.
If I could go back in time, I would like to return to the period when we traveled as a family. Dad and mom sat in the front, and we sat in the back of the classic blue Caprice. Although they tried to maintain order, we, restlessly, expressed what we felt. We went from tiredness to joy, from curiosity to boredom. Although dad said we shouldn't get our hearts set on anything, from the moment we left the house, we started asking: I want juice, I want mango, I want a rag doll. After telling us no several times, they gave up and eventually pleased us. Seeing my mother massage dad's neck or give him little caresses on the nape while he was driving is perhaps one of the happiest and most peaceful images I had when I was a child.
Likewise, I would like to return to the time when my grandmother was alive. I would like to hear her words, her stories so full of wisdom, to see those eyes that seemed like slits through which a lot of light came and went. To sit at her feet, as before, while she combed and braided my hair. To go back to the past and ask Maíta, as I called her, what her childhood had been like, what her parents had been like, why she cried so much when she sang some indigenous songs.
Finally, I want to go back to the time when David, my deceased nephew, was a mischievous child and asked me to lift him into the trees, onto the swings, onto the merry-go-round. When he ran out to meet me after I came home from work, he would check my purse and say to me: "Auntie, what did you bring me?" I would give my life to give him a hug, cover his face with kisses, run my hand through his hair, and play with his ears that were always cold. Going back to that moment would make me the happiest woman in the world.
Somewhere I read that when we die, we return to the age and with the people with whom we were happy. Likewise, that when we die, our loved ones who have already passed come to find us. I hope, with all my heart, that when I cross the final threshold, on the other side, Dad, Maíta, and David will be waiting for me to live, once again, a new life together.
