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Widower recreates late wife's pregnancy photos with their 'miracle' daughter on her 1st birthday

What a heartbreakingly beautiful reminder of the gift of life.

X&V Photography/Facebook

Her memory is honored in the most beautiful way.

In the summer of 2020, Yesenia Aguilar was walking on a sidewalk five minutes from home in Anaheim, California when a drunk driver jumped the curb with her Jeep and struck her. The vehicle narrowly missed her husband, James Alvarez, who was walking beside her. Aguilar was 35 weeks pregnant at the time.

Tragically, Aguilar died at the hospital, but the couple's baby, Adalyn Rose, was delivered via cesarean section and survived. For the next year, Alvarez poured himself into being a good dad to Adalyn while processing the grief and trauma of witnessing his wife be killed right in front of him. The story was widely covered in the news and many people have followed Alvarez as he shares his life with Adalyn on social media. A year after the accident, Alvarez shared photos of Adalyn's first birthday and it people deeply.

With the help of X & V Photography, Alvarez recreated a photoshoot he and Aguilar did not long before the accident. Aguilar was dressed in a pink gown, with her baby bump featuring prominently in the photos. In the new shoot, Alvarez dressed Adalyn in a pink dress as well and posed her in the places her mother was in the previous one.

The effect is sadly touching and achingly beautiful—a reminder of the gift of life.

It's hard to imagine what range of emotions this shoot must have brought up for Alvarez.

It's also hard to imagine how Adalyn will process the whole story when she's old enough to understand.

But what a beautiful tribute to the woman who gave a life before hers was taken.

"Adalyn, I know if your mommy was here, she would have been the happiest person alive," Alvarez wrote in an Instagram share of the photo shoot. "She would be so excited to celebrate your birthday. That's why, I'm making sure I fulfill her wishes and wish the happiest birthday ever baby. Your mommy and daddy loves you."

It's the hardest thing to make beauty out of tragedy, but these photos prove it's possible.

Since that shoot, life has moved on. Alvarez found love once again, and that new family is growing.

And yet, it seems that every year, on Adalyn's birthday, the memory of Yesenia is still honored.

This article originally appeared four years ago.

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Man receives phone call from deceased father, proving that grief is like glitter

"Grief is like glitter. You never know when it's going to show up sometimes."

Dad Chats|TikTok

Man's phone call from deceased dad is lesson on grief

Grief is such a strong emotion that most people don't exit this earth having skipped the experience. When grieving the loss of a loved one in the early days, the grief can be so strong that it feels like physical pain. You may start to believe that you've cried so much that there must be something medically wrong with you for your body to still be producing tears. There's no placating cliché about grief that can make the early moments of it more tolerable.

But as people move past the active grieving stage, it contorts itself into something more tolerable that allows you to continue daily obligations before it changes again. Once years pass, grief becomes sort of like a silent passenger holding a jack-in-the-box. You find yourself having full on belly laughs again, feeling quite normal when suddenly out pops that dang clown from the depths of the box.

One man took to his TikTok account, dadchats, to share his experience with a surprise moment of grief for his father that passed away three years prior. It's the perfect depiction of the realities of grieving a profound loss.

"Last night my dead father called me on his cellphone," he starts the video. "It's 9:30 p.m. and I'm watching the Packers vs Taylor Swift game when all of a sudden my phone goes off and for the past five months if I get a call that late at night it's either about a vehicle warranty or it's about getting more printer ink."

The grieving son jokes about not having a printer before explaining how his deceased father called him. Turns out, it wasn't his father, likely much to is relief and simultaneous disappointment. The call was from his mother who never stopped paying for his father's phone unbeknownst to the man picking his heart up off of the floor after seeing "dad" pop up on his phone screen. He explains that his mother only ever calls him from her home phone so this call was sort of a jump scare of the worst kind.

@dadchats

Grief still knows my number

The man got emotional talking about the deep yearning you feel when missing a parent who has passed away. He revealed that his dad dying was a fear he had since childhood due to how old his father was when he was born so he stocked up on voicemails to avoid forgetting his dad's voice. After a few more tear filled moments, the grieving son gives a bit of advice.

"If you're struggling, especially just out of the blue, that's ok, that happens. That's normal, just sit in it. Grieve with it, feel it. It doesn't go away I don't think, it certainly hasn't for me, it still feels as fresh today as it did three years ago."

Viewers of his heartfelt video flocked to the comments to leave words of encouragement and to detail their own experiences with grief. It was truly a moment of what community can look like online.

"Your[sic] absolutely right that the first thing you forget is the sound of their voice! I so badly wish I could still hear the sound of my mom's voice," one person writes.

"Hits home! I called my dad every night for years and kept picking up the phone for months only to remember he won't answer," another admits.

"Grief is like glitter. You never know when it's going to show up, sometimes," someone relates.

That commenter is right, grief is like glitter. No matter how long ago you handled glitter you'll still find little sparkly flecks of it every where you go.

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Andrew Garfield sums up the grief of losing his mom in a simple and captivating way

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Andrew Garfield with Stephen Colbert.

Andrew Garfield came onto “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” to promote his new movie, “tick, tick… Boom.” What he gave instead was a truly touching story about love and loss, with a refreshing and relatable twist.

The sweet moment comes at the four-minute mark of the interview, where Colbert asked Garfield how playing Broadway composer Jonathan Larson (who died suddenly of a heart issue at the upswing of his creative career) helped him process the unexpected loss of his mother.

Instead of wishing the pain away, Garfield states, “I hope this grief stays with me.”

“This is all of the unexpressed love,” he continues. “The grief that will remain with us until we pass because we never get enough time with each other, no matter whether someone lives until 60 or 15 or 99. I hope this grief stays with me because it’s all of the unexpressed love that I didn’t get to tell her, and I told her every day, she was the best of us.

“I got to sing Jonathan Larson’s unfinished song, while simultaneously singing for my mother and her unfinished song. This film is to do with this ticking clock that we all have, that we all know, somewhere deep down that life is sacred, life is short, and we better just be here as much as possible with each other, holding on to each other.”

He concludes with, “Both John and my mother were warriors for art. They knew the power of art and knew the power of leaving the world in a slightly more beautiful state than how they found it.”

Garfield’s moving testament—with nearly 800,000 views on YouTube—helps put to words that inexplicable, bittersweet yet sublime feeling of loss, and how it helps remind us to take stock of the good things while they’re still here.

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