“Doubt thou the stars are fire
Doubt thou the sun doth move
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love”
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Growing up, my paternal grandparents were never far. They were fixtures at every holiday, pillars of family lore, and two of my parents favorite babysitters. They introduced me to delights like frozen grapes on humid days, ice cream for dinner, and the natural coils of a vacuum chord. They doted upon me sage advice like; "Never take any wooden nickels," and "It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice." They lived for their seven grandchildren, their dew drops. They never passed up a chance to send a card, a custom crocheted blanket, a voicemail. They proudly inflated our wins and kissed us for our losses. Their love for us filled their penultimate days, when they had little left to do but daydream amidst a community of aging souls.
I started documenting them as I realized they were wilting– my grandpa's handwriting shriveled, my grandma's memory lapsed. They retired to wheelchairs and scooters, endured surgeries and strokes. They were fierce through the thick of it, reaching out as I moved further geographically and they moved into separate hospital rooms, intensive care, assisted living. Initially, documenting their last years was my attempt to capture what time kept stealing, to preserve the fleeting, but I found it served much more.
I brought my camera to my grandma's funeral in the summer of 2014. It was the hardest thing I've ever photographed, maneuvering around my mourning relatives with tears in my eyes, unsure if my unfettered access was disrespectful or unhealthy. I flew home and immersed myself in editing a memorial video, repurposing footage I made with them in 2010 about an infamous bed bug outbreak. I ordered and re-ordered this collection of photos. I wrote and rewrote these words. It wasn't until I stepped away that I realized I wasn't trying to preserve these moments, I was simply trying to process them, rehome them, make them more comfortable for me to hold. It was uncomplicated, the simple human impulse to tell a story— it helps us witness hard experiences with beauty and reverence, giving purpose to something that can feel unruddered. Through all of the loss, I gained a deeper understanding of the love that my grandparents spent their whole lives building, and a deeper understanding of how it built me.
As the famed neurologist Oliver Sack’s said, “To be ourselves we must have ourselves — possess, if need be re-possess, our life-stories. We must “recollect” ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative, of ourselves. A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self.” This story is, and always was, for me. While I hope others can find something of themselves here, this is my funeral bouquet, my sweets, to two very sweet people, now gone.
My grandpa Ernie once said, "You live your life through your family, and if you've got a good family, good stock, this is the beauty of living as long as we did."
My grandpa died in 2021 after barely surviving a bad case of COVID. There was a funeral that I had to miss. I used pieces from this project for a new memorial video, held virtually in different corners of the country. While the edit is emblematic of his vivacious wit and stubborn loyalty, I’ll keep it in the vault as a memento of my own grief and tender love for my sweet Beep Beep.
