Looking at photographs can cause countless types of emotions to be stirred within ourselves. Sometimes they make us happy. Sometimes sad. Then there’s the happy kind of sad. Or just the sad sad. Not too often do they bring back bad memories though. Most of the time they help us to remember the good. Friendships and relationships are practically defined by photographs when we’re looking from the outside in. It’s a single moment completely frozen in time. Whether we’re looking at past parties, weddings, vacations, or plain old sitting on the couches, it’s a weird feeling to look on at this 5 by 7 piece of paper and be able to reminisce. But the point of this post is not about the photos you’re able to reminisce about. It’s about the photos that we cherish because it’s literally all we have. They’re not backed by any memory. They’re simply a source to imagine and admire other people’s memories and to be able to get a glimpse of who they were. Something we can hold onto not out of remembrance, but for the sake of holding onto something.
I spent the majority of my day today at my grandma’s old house with my dad. She died about a year and a half ago. And my grandpa died when I was about 5 or 6, so I really don’t remember a whole lot of him. Only snippets here and there. But we ended up finding all of these old pictures in the attic and I entered a world I didn’t know a thing about. Sure, I have seen many pictures of my grandpa. But for some reason, I’ve never seen many old, old ones. Like when my dad and uncles were just little kids. And my grandparents were young parents. So when I started, I wasn’t able to stop. As we’d go through them, I would ask my dad all sorts of questions. I learned a lot. Like the stories behind various vacations, what my grandma’s nickname was, and even how creepily similar my young grandpa looked like Rivers Cuomo, right down to the glasses. We also found some old letters from Austria or Hungary, written in German from my great-grandparents’ family, the things my grandma collected, a super old camera they used from the 50’s, and I even saw my grandpa’s gun and brass knuckles from WWII. It was really cool. All the history. But I feel so late in the game on this. I feel like I’m too old to be just seeing and learning these things today. It was weirdly emotional for me. I’ll always have a feeling of regret for not getting to know my grandma as much or becoming as close as I could have with her. And I’ve always wished I could have the memories of my grandpa that my older siblings and cousins have of him. Because I’ve never heard one bad thing about him. He sounded like a wonderful, caring, loving, happy man. Even the snippets I do remember of him are filled with nothing but pure warmth. So the fact he died when I was so young is really disheartening to me. I just really wished I had known him. Especially because I could see through all of these small little photographs what kind of person both he and my grandma were. And they were beautiful people.
In any case, there was one moment in particular that stuck out with me today. It was the moment I found this picture. It’s of my grandma and grandpa in the basement of the house my father grew up in. The house I was in at that moment. When I showed my dad, he smiled and said they always loved to entertain. I just stared at it for like 2 whole minutes after that. I’ve never seen such a genuinely happy picture of them like this. There’s tons and tons of them being happy and smiling, as we all do in pictures. But this one was different. I didn’t see them as the parents of my dad. I saw two jubilant people. I saw a young couple in love. It showed me a version that I didn’t normally associate with them. They were like me. They had friends. They went to parties. They loved to laugh. They enjoyed life. There was so much more to them than being my grandparents. And this was not a photo I could pass by and put back into a shoebox. Even after going through so many more, I couldn’t bring myself to put it away. I kept coming back to it. I wanted nothing more than to be able to talk to them and have them tell me what it was that made them laugh in that moment. I just wanted to know everything. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Gosh…I’m so all over the place with this post and I’m trying to make it sound cohesive but it’s really just not happening. I’m sorry. I guess what I’m trying to say though, is that this photo make me sad as heck for what I’ve missed out on. And makes me super happy for what I’m able to hold onto now. I regret not appreciating them more. And I wish I were as close as some people are with theirs. But I think that’s why this had such an effect on me. It put things in perspective I guess. And I just love looking at this picture, along with the others. My grandparents were special people. They loved eachother to death and loved their children and grandchildren to death, too. I may not be able to be close with them right now, but it’s comforting to know more about them through photographs and all the things that are left behind. And even though I don’t know what was so funny in this moment, or what on earth my grandpa was doing with his arms, I can always use my imagination. (And in my imagination he’s imitating a grizzly bear, btw.)
