The Old Mistake

I made a mistake.  I've made it before.  I looked at pictures from when the boys were little.  We were together then and life was made of hope.  It was a time that won't come back and so I cried, as I do each time.  There is no way, nor inclination, to share this sadness.  No way not to wish it could not be then, and that the future would have been longer than it was.  It is not that today is empty.  In so many ways it is so very full, and it offers a different satisfaction.  All it lacks is that it is not then instead.