[HN Gopher] Leaving and Waving
___________________________________________________________________
Leaving and Waving
Author : Duke_Pixie
Score : 505 points
Date : 2024-11-12 05:44 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (deannadikeman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (deannadikeman.com)
| indianmouse wrote:
| 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!
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| 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.
| eclecticfrank wrote:
| 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.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Beautiful fragility captured.
| martypitt wrote:
| This is beautiful, and heartbreaking.
|
| Thanks for sharing.
| kokkis wrote:
| I cried.
| iammjm wrote:
| 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
| noneeeed wrote:
| 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.
| jaymzcampbell wrote:
| > 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...
| ponector wrote:
| 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.
| pjmlp wrote:
| 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.
| justmarc wrote:
| Beautiful. Sad. Life.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| Beautiful and so very sad.
| TheFin wrote:
| Well, someone's chopping onions. In a Datacenter. Go figure.
| jmathai wrote:
| 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.
| sirdvd wrote:
| > 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.
| jmathai wrote:
| 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.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > how do you say goodbye when you're the one leaving?
|
| promise to bring back something nice
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 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.
| username135 wrote:
| Mind sharing your process? While my parents are still around,
| I want to digitize the hundreds of photos they have of the
| previous generations while we can still identify them. It
| seems like a daunting task!
| tomjen3 wrote:
| 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.
| leobg wrote:
| 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.
| litenboll wrote:
| Very touching and beautiful. Just now, this year, I started
| taking pictures of my parents waving me away on the platform.
| binary132 wrote:
| Oh boy. Right in the feels. My dad is starting to decline.
| fschuett wrote:
| 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
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yep, got a relative with that exact phrase on their headstone.
| yapyap wrote:
| wow, right in the feels
| t3rse wrote:
| 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.
| abyrne10 wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0] https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html
| pknerd wrote:
| Am I the only one who had tears after seeing the last picture
| where none of his parents were there to say goodbye?
| crabbone wrote:
| 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.
| ndileas wrote:
| 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.
| crabbone wrote:
| 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.
| gooeyblob wrote:
| It is very weird to write all this about a nice series of
| photographs
| crabbone wrote:
| 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.
| sdlkj- wrote:
| to me this makes it all the more odd - at a glace the top
| level responses are about how the piece made them
| emotional/sad or are reminisces about their own parents.
|
| What's wrong with that? Because these folks experienced the
| "best outcome" (presumably to see their parents live to old
| age) they shouldn't get emotional about it?
| crabbone wrote:
| "Emotional" is the kind of half-truth word. There are
| many different emotions. The emotion in question is
| what's responsible for the response. Saying "emotional"
| is omitting the important part. It's like saying
| "involved in road accident" w/o saying whether one caused
| the said accident or was the victim of.
|
| The top-level response in question is disgusting. It's
| like listening to someone who won a million dollars in a
| lottery complain that they didn't win ten millions.
| Should I really feel compassionate towards a "victim" of
| such a bad luck of only winning a single million? Even if
| the "victim" genuinely feels bad about themselves?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| 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.
| crabbone wrote:
| 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?
| kbutler wrote:
| 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.
| keithnz wrote:
| It seems to me you aren't going to relate much as you haven't
| experienced losing parents who you have strong bonds with.
| keybored wrote:
| Sour grapes.
|
| There's no fairness to the audience you'll have. Or they will
| have. Some people will experience a pebble in their shoe, tell
| the harrowing story, and people will hail them for the courage
| that they are showing. The openess. The hard-earned wisdom. And
| there's nothing anything can do about that.
| JohnDeHope wrote:
| 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.
| nicgrev103 wrote:
| 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.
| siavosh wrote:
| 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.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| 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/
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Man the last one where the mother is at the house (3/2017) is
| just tough.
| nf3 wrote:
| 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.
| stvltvs wrote:
| 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.
| keybored wrote:
| How nice for you.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| 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.
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| I'd argue that's ONE of the many purposes that people can
| choose in life :)
| dottjt wrote:
| 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.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| That's... rough, man. Take care. I hope that on the whole, the
| light manages to balance the darkness somewhat.
| mottiden wrote:
| Sending you a huge hug
| endofreach wrote:
| i tend to follow paths laid out by wishful thinking
| --knowingly, yet is there no intention. and is it tough, i like
| to wander just as slow into the lostness. if i was you, i'd see
| the hope, that life, or god, the universe... whatever i might
| call it, has forced this life upon me while whispering to me,
| that just through pain, it will be honest, and that i
| (specifically)-- would not have grasped, in time, the misery,
| of what it-- takes, not what i've lost-- for, and not from, me,
| to be the loving, present parent for my daughter, that i will--
| now for certain-- be.
|
| through the darkness, every cry through every scream, for all
| the pain you've taken-- and not given me.
| leobg wrote:
| 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.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| 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.
| sizzle wrote:
| Be there for her after and don't live with any regrets
| ocular-rockular wrote:
| As a hobbyist photographer, I am deeply touched by this. Thank
| you for sharing this.
| imchillyb wrote:
| '...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.
| sizzle wrote:
| 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?
| sedatk wrote:
| Reminds me of the finale of Six Feet Under.
|
| "You can't take a picture of this. It's already gone"
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(page generated 2024-11-12 23:00 UTC)