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Leaving and Waving

deannadikeman.com

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Re: Leaving and Waving

#31

Post by pjmlp »

iammjm wrote: post #8

Right now I’m on a train from southern Poland to north-western Germany, about 1200 kilometres apart, after visiting my family, as I do about twice a year, and going back to where I live and work. My parents have both passed 60 recently. How many more such visits will I yet get to spend with them? Thank you for this submission, very well timed for me, and made me tear up a bit, but also made me appreciate my folks eve…

I left Portugal and have been around other European countries since the early 2000's, also do similar trips back home, already lost many dear relatives including one of my parents, yes it hits hard, and makes one wonder how to sort out this kind of issues.

It is also one of the reasons why I no longer take jobs without remote option across Europe, not only the country where the company is located (naturally as long as I can afford to be picky).

All the best.

Re: Leaving and Waving

#32

Post by penguin_booze »

Every time I visit my parents (who live in another continent), every time we celebrate something together, every time we fight, I think to myself, "how would next time look like". I know for sure that some of them will be irredeemably different to the present. No amount of negative visualization may help me, I fear.

[0] https://stoicismu.com/stoicism-negative-visualization/

Re: Leaving and Waving

#33

Post by gooeyblob »

crabbone wrote: post #25

I was recently recommended the book The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. And while people who recommended this book said they had an epiphany moment reading it, all I saw there was a story of someone who's been served everything in their life on a silver platter. Someone who came to meet the literal end of their life, and yet grown no humility nor a bit of introspection... Until the last page I was waiting for the punch…

It is very weird to write all this about a nice series of photographs

Re: Leaving and Waving

#37

Post by JKCalhoun »

jmathai wrote: post #14

The finality of death feels impossible to grasp. I think of this with my parents who are in their 90s and live on the other side of the world. I also think of it with my own children - how do you say goodbye when you’re the one leaving? I love the story these photographs tell. I’m an avid archiver of our family’s photos. The other thing I did was to interview my parents 20 years ago to document their life experience…

We reach!

I also am the avid family photo archiver (I scan them, tag them, release them).

The oldest photo I have is a tintype of a young girl around 1882 or so. She is maybe two years old — and is my great grandmother.

I never met her, she had died before I was born. But I have studied her in the photos going all the way back to that tintype of her — somewhere in Missouri. Photos show her with her sisters and parents not long before they died, working in the fields, married to my great grandfather, with her children. Her children become adults and at some point it is clear that the daughter's role has reversed and she is taking care of mom. Great grandmother is soon old and so frail looking. And then there is a photo of the headstone for her.

It has been a little sobering, as "photo historian" for the family, seeing the arc of lives lived and now gone.

Re: Leaving and Waving

#39

Post by nf3 »

Wonderful! Watching one's closest people age is so cool! I love looking at my wife (we've been married for 20 years) and seeing how she's changing through the years, her eyes, her skin, her figure, it's fascinating. Same for the wrinkles on my mother's hands, or even my own.

For me, there's nothing scary or sad about growing old and then dying. It's natural, it's beautiful, it's just great the way it is.

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