Nostalagia

Definitely happy memories: of childhood, parents, teenage years, early days of marriage and parenthood, places where I have worked and people I have worked with, family holidays and later holidays with just the two of us. Very few bad ones, I am very lucky and it’s good to be reminded of it, thank you Alexa.

Happy Memories - but with a tinge os sadness for things past.

To me there is "fond remembrance" of happy times - and then there is nostalgia which is different and actually hurts in a very poignant way. Pleasant memories gone forever...like a loss.
Robert Burns poem/song "Ye banks and braes" sums it up for me. He knew the feeling.

"Ye'll break my heart ye warbling birds
That wantons thro' the flowering thorn
Ye mind me o' departed joys
Departed never to return " ........to the music..... aaaaargh, unbearably sad.

I never worry about not dwelling on things though but just very occasionally do have a good old wallow in it. No point in denying our emotions.... then hey-ho. on with the show!

Music evokes memories for me, my nostalgia times are listening to 60s music, those innocent times in my teens. I do look back with great fondness over my life but tinged with sadness for family members no longer alive.

I don't yearn for "the good old days" as times have changed, the carefree days of my childhood no longer exist for my DGSs

Funnily enough I read an article only yesterday by Kate Humble describing hiraeth as a longing to return to Wales, her homeland. It was advertising a forthcoming TV programme I think.

But nostalgia is not what it once was!

Richard Burton often spoke of hiraeth and came back often with his different wives.

I couldn’t move to Lincolnshire because I could never leave Wales, the mountains, coast line, rivers, lakes, South Wales valleys, the accents, but it also means many generations who I never knew, so it means I would lose me !

Alexia. There are two songs ie 'A certain time, a certain place' and 'The things we did last summer' that reduce me to tears. They bring back memories of my not. necessarily young days, but of the person I shared them with.

I think the description homesickness for a place you can never return to sums it up perfectly for me - not necessarily even a place - a time may be better. I used to get memory triggers from smells too - chrysanthemums would bring an instant recall of my mum and a big vase of them at Christmas. Those triggers are another loss with anosmia. I was once interviewed by someone studying it and this was one of the things she was most interested in - being transported back in time by a smell

Thanks for link Annie - it is definitely a great description for a word we don't have.

Sometimes happy sometimes sad memories but on the whole being happily thinking of times and people long gone.

I don't understand why I feel nostalgic about things from my childhood, which wasn't emotionally happy.
Garden plants are a case in point and possessions from the childhood home.
I think it's a sadness for what might have been. I had that overwhelming sensation when my mother died.

I so agree Willow. Some smells just catapult me back to certain places. No thinking, just instant memories. I always enjoy this but with a twinge of sadness too.

Bit of both I think. Sadness and happiness too.

That word evokes so many feelings, sadness at lost innocence, a longing to be back with my parents both no longer with me, missed opportunities, mistakes that i made in my life that make me feel nostalgic for the old days and the longing to restart my life over. I dont have any nostalgic feeling of happiness as my life has not turned out how i would have wanted it.

Remember:: nostalgia ain't what it used to be.....

I was a young child during the war and it must have been a very tense and frightening time for everyone.
A couple of years ago we went to Bletchley Park. In the first room you're suddenly hit with sounds and visuals of wartime - I burst into floods of tears. And I don't normally cry much.

Me too Teetime!

I agree with many posters but especially pinny4 saying nostalgia is actually a very painful thing. I think how much it hurts depends very much on the losses one experiences in life. When I was younger I loved talking about the old days - golden days of childhood and teenage years, the newly married years and being blessed with a wonderful daughter, the fab music and clothes and such a zest for life but now having lost so many loved ones I find it impossible sometimes to listen to something beautiful without that piercing sense of loss assailing me. And though my life is good and I have many many things to be thankful for nostalgia, for me, is very bittersweet .

DD and SiL bought a house on the street where my mother and I were both born and grew up. My mother had many siblings, who all lived nearby, so growing up there meant so many family get togethers, big and small. Happy days. I can't walk down the street without yearning for those days. It sometimes brings tears to my eyes. It is nostalgia - and it's bittersweet!

Just reading these posts is bringing tears to my eyes, nostalgia is sadness, to reminisce is to be happy.

Ahhh nostalgia, I remember that!

Christina Rossetti wrote " It is better to forget and be happy than remember and be sad." Ever since my father died when I was 17 I have followed this advice and found it helpful.

Kathyd, is it perhaps your childhood that you are grieving for?

Reading these posts. Is it good for health to understand exactly which loss one is grieving for?

And is it good for health to believe that grief may feel horrible but that grief is nevertheless good? I think so, as how could we be fully conscious if we could not grieve.

For me looking back is upsetting, I think of school days and childhood then get a flash back to my school and the street I grew up in destroyed by a disaster. My first romance was murdered in S.A. Marriage was bliss but two babies died and husband died. My darling daughters growing up , elder one now dead. Seems happy times ended with grief.