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Leaving And Waving
Growing up I didn't really know my father. He was an alcoholic and spent his time with his friends drinking when I was young. My parents separated when I was around 8 years old and I haven't seen my father since, even till this day (I am around 30).
I was never really close with my mother. We would eat dinner in separate rooms. We grew more and more distant throughout my teen years and when I was 20 I decided to disown her and we're now estranged.
There were multiple attempts to "get back" but none were successful. I think what I realised in the end was that she was too much of a free spirit. She wanted to have her separate life and have me co-exist in it, without dedicating herself to me like a parent normally would.
I don't think I'll miss them or feeling anything for them when they pass. My mother, maybe a little. My father, not at all. But I don't forsee being at her death bed, even if she told me she was dying. Maybe I'm just stubborn or am held captive by a matter of "principle and integrity". If a relationship is cut off, then it's cut off. Meaning you both have to deal with the good and the bad. I've decided there's more good than bad.
In some senses it feels like I never had parents at all. Like there's nothing to miss, because how can one miss an absence?
I hope though to be the parent I never had to my daughter. Unfortunately my partner has stage 4 cancer so won't be around for most of my daughter's life at a very young age, but that's okay. This is life and life is me.
That's... rough, man. Take care. I hope that on the whole, the light manages to balance the darkness somewhat.
Sending you a huge hug
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 in one go from their perspective (separately, because they are different).
Maybe not everyone is a nostalgic, but for those of us who are - I encourage doing these things now. It’s never to late to start and they might bring comfort both today and when you wave your last goodbye.
My grandparents died recently. They were born in the 1920s. Cleaning out their house I discovered countless letters, photo albums and diaries that I had no idea existed. I regret not asking them for permission to go through their stuff while they were still alive. I think they would have said yes - and there would have been many, many interesting conversations. I have read many biographies. But going through their things I can see how much there was to learn from them. And I did learn a lot from them - but some things just never came up, because they had forgotten and I didn’t know what questions to ask.
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.
> Maybe not everyone is a nostalgic, but for those of us who are - I encourage doing these things now.
Is not just for nostalgia. I would've loved if my parents recorded even just a few minutes of their grandparents or great-grandparents to pass them to my children.
You’re right. I have a video recording of a my grandparent talking on the porch of his home in India where my parents grew up. He was describing the elephants that roamed the area and how he and his siblings would help tend the land. Truly a treasured clip treasured if my children’s great grandparents.
> how do you say goodbye when you’re the one leaving?
promise to bring back something nice
I finished digitalising my analog photos (that was only a few albums, I got a digital camera around 14 years of age) and sorted them then made both my mum (early sixties) and my grandma (mid eighties) a set on a digital photo frame (along with copies of some of my digital photos). Those frames are a bit pricy and will need a techie to setup, but the gifts were very well received.
I would have done that with my other grandma, but we grew apart and then dementia destroyed what was left of her. I will likely digitalize her photo collection when she is moved to a retirement home.
As others have said, you should also get their stories on camera on as a recording, if possible. There will come a time where this is no longer possible.
Made me think of this bit from Tim Urban’s classic blog post, The Tail End[0]:
>It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.
I can’t imagine sticking a frail but mobile and healthy parent in assisted living. I would give them a room to spend their last days or I would forever regret it. Anyone else?
I'm 43 and my parents still wave to me just like this when I leave from a visit with them. It makes me incredibly sad to know the inevitable end to this. Barring something drastic happening, my dad will likely go first. I don't know how my mom will ever handle it. They've been married since she was 19 and he was 21. I don't know how any of us will handle it.
Don't hesitate to do the things today which will otherwise become regrets tomorrow.
Be there for her after and don’t live with any regrets
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.
I agree, but that doesn't stop us from missing someone when they're gone, like a friend who's moved far away. The difference is that death is so final. There's absolutely no chance to call them or visit them. They're just gone.
That's sad, and being sad is natural too.
I teared up when the father passed away and actually cried at the empty driveway. What a beautiful expression of love. I wish I had done something similar when I had the chance. Thanks for sharing.
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 even more. It’s up to us to make the best of the time we and the people we love still have left with each other
We really don't appreciate how little time we get with our parents once we grow up and move away. It comes in snatches and moments, and then they are no more.
I wish I'd spent more quality time with mine while I could. I feel like I didn't start really talking to my dad until the last few years of his life. I didn't realise how much I had to ask them both until they were gone.
> I wish I'd spent more quality time with mine while I could
Absolutely! My parents were never always that healthy but would love a long walk and meander. I had a period where I didn't go home for a few years and when I finally saw them again it was shocking how much they'd declined. A couple more years since and now they can barely walk more than 10 meters without stopping in pain. Now it's so bad we can't even walk to a corner shop nearby. When I think back that only a few years ago I could've gone on a long walk through London with my father, it stings. Now it's a case of "what next" with their health.
Of course it seems like you have to learn this lesson "for real" for it to sink in, which is the sad bit about life...
Only if you have a good relationship with parents. Many people don't want to spend any time with family, moving to the other city as soon as possible.
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.
Remember friend, as you pass by
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, soon you may be
Prepare for death and follow me
Yep, got a relative with that exact phrase on their headstone.
I don't appreciate this stuff, I'm not the target audience for it, but I'll be darned if this didn't kick me hard in the feels.
It's crazy how our purpose in life really is just to train another human or two to predict like we do, once per lifetime. Then we die and the new human has to do the same, all over again, a little bit better this time - maybe.
I'd argue that's ONE of the many purposes that people can choose in life :)
Very touching and beautiful. Just now, this year, I started taking pictures of my parents waving me away on the platform.
As a hobbyist photographer, I am deeply touched by this. Thank you for sharing this.
Well, someone's chopping onions. In a Datacenter. Go figure.
The most beautiful thing I've ever seen in a very long time!
I could relate to it though there are no photographs, but the memories and the moment are frozen forever! Some can never be replaced or compared against!
Thanks for sharing and bringing a tear drop around the corner of my eyes!
Have a beautiful day!
Love from India!
Am I the only one who had tears after seeing the last picture where none of his parents were there to say goodbye?
‘…little boy blue and the man in the moon. When ya coming’ home son? I don’t know when. We’ll get together then. You know we’ll have a good time then.’
All we have are snatches, glimpses, a rotoscope of moments. Then it’s gone. All of it.
Capture those waves, smiles and frowns. Cherish the light and the shadow while it’s possible because all that remains after is the long dark.
This made me cry. Being intimidated by the temporality of relationships but also stunned at how beautiful goodbyes can be.
I had seen these photos before and saw them return to reddit during the past few days. Couldn't click on them until now, because I was afraid of the emotions they would surface.
Impressive work.
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.
A few years ago I went through digitising all my grandmothers old albums. The final picture was my grandfather on his deathbed, she stopped making any albums after even though she was only 60. She died 2 yrs later. This hit me hard.
Beautiful. As I’ve grown older and moved back near my parents with my own family, this is something I think about every time we visit. I’m going to start taking some of these pictures.
27 years. And yet, these aren’t that many photos. It’s not grains of sand running through an hourglass. It’s forks of a single meal. No seconds. And with the difference that the plate may be snatched from you at any moment, even though you thought you’d still have plenty left.
Man the last one where the mother is at the house (3/2017) is just tough.
Hits hard for me as a Gen X - my parents are still here but it's a reminder of how time is passing on us. They live in Africa so visits are few.
Oh boy. Right in the feels. My dad is starting to decline.
Beautiful and so very sad.
Beautiful fragility captured.
This is beautiful, and heartbreaking.
Thanks for sharing.
I cried.
wow, right in the feels
Beautiful. Sad. Life.
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 punchline. I wanted the author to admit that he was exceptionally lucky, that when things stopped being easy, he finally saw the light.
The missing punchline turned out to be much harder to swallow than anything author could probably come up with. The whole thing turned out to be the typical in academic circles foreword to "selected works", where the author desperately tries to mention every even marginally useful person in a vain hope that by stroking their ego, they'd increase their "impact factor".
One of the points in that book that came out as bizarre was when the author sought love advice from his parents... at the young age of thirty-something years old. The reliance on the parents, while doesn't play the key role, is still prominently featured throughout this self-styled epitaph.
* * *
I've only ever gotten to know one of my grandparents. My grandmother passed away when I was twelve. I have zero photographs of her. Nothing's left in the family to remind me of her. I don't know if my mother is alive. The last time we spoke I was sixteen. I have no idea if she still lives where she used to live when I left. And I have no interest in discovering what if anything's left of her. My parents split up when I was seven. Despite being a spiteful and abusive evil piece of shit who couldn't hold a job and had no means to sustain herself, let alone two children, my mom got full custody by the time it came to the family court. So, I grew without a father. I got briefly to know him by the time I was in high-school, but then I left to a different country.
Today we don't speak the same language, live worlds apart, and there are front-lines of a very hot and bloody war between us. I don't come to visit, and don't expect to be able to come to my dad's funeral.
People waxing emotional over having living parents who took part in their lives, who had something to contribute... kind of turn my stomach upside-down. They have no idea how good they have it, and yet they present their quite happy and fulfilling life as some kind of world-ending tragedy.
I am going to say something straightforward and possibly hurtful. I mean it seriously and respectfully.
Just because you have been damaged emotionally, does not invalidate other people's emotions. They are quite possibly feeling the lowest lows of their lives -- even if that low is a mountain pass versus your death valley. They still deserve respect in grief, even if overall they have had a wonderful life.
People are made of the same things. They aren't somehow incomparable.
Someone with living and attentive parents, who lived in good health to their nineties, lived in their own home, in a well-to-do country, where their child came to visit them, in their own car, in good weather, etc... what more did they expect to happen? This is the best outcome by far they could expect from life. They've won the lottery, what more do they want?
No. You completely misunderstood my point. I'm not "emotionally damaged". Overwhelming majority of people on planet Earth don't have it anywhere near as good as the people in OP or a bunch of people commenting here about their quite alive and quite well-to-do families. With all that happened to me, I'm still among the few percents who has it relatively well. Vastly more people in this world will have it worse than I have.
The entitlement of people crying about how bad they have it, when they are among the fraction of a percent of those who have it the best it can possibly be is what's so disgusting.
It seems to me you aren't going to relate much as you haven't experienced losing parents who you have strong bonds with.
It is very weird to write all this about a nice series of photographs
This is less about the series of photograph and more of a response to a bunch of other disjoint top-level responses in this thread.
I'm sorry that having never had these relationships, you cannot comprehend the loss. In seeing this series and the comments, I see both the sweetness of the relationships and the hint of the grief at their passing.
Yes, we recognize that having loving parents is an immeasurable blessing. While their passing is not a world-ending tragedy, it is precisely because we know how precious that interaction is, that we mourn their passing - and encourage others who have it to treasure it.
But there are other precious relationships and interactions that we can establish, build, and treasure.
Respectfully, this is kind of a shocking thing to read.
> People waxing emotional over having living parents who took part in their lives, who had something to contribute... kind of turn my stomach upside-down. They have no idea how good they have it, and yet they present their quite happy and fulfilling life as some kind of world-ending tragedy.
Good fortune can open oneself up to greater heartbreak, and misfortune can do the worse. Likewise, the opposite can happen: fortune can blind the fortunate, and enable happiness when the unfortunate overcome.
It goes all ways and directions. But for whatever hardship you have, you missed out on other sorts of hardship. And whatever hardships you dealt with, the author of any memoir may have missed those obstacles. Be at peace! And don't expect anyone to walk the same path as you.
I'm sorry you missed out on these experiences, but that doesn't mean that the normal experience of being a human - that is your parents living into your own adulthood - ought to be taboo.
I don't "have hardship". I don't struggle. With all that happened in my life, I'm still among the vanishingly small group of people who have it too good to complain.
Whatever your fortune or misfortune opens you to is only relevant if you are under... maybe twelve years old. As a grownup, you are expected to be able to put things into perspective and realize that complaining about a pea under twenty mattresses doesn't really make you into a princess.
> the normal experience of being a human - that is your parents living into your own adulthood
However common this is, it's not the point. The point is that people in this thread complain about the best outcome that is possible in this situation. These people complain about winning the lottery for crying out loud. How much more entitled can you get?
