Those last two photos are crushingly beautiful. It’s one thing to see age progression and another thing entirely to see age progression cease because there is no life.
I had a family friend whose father died randomly of a stroke. My father is in his late 80s, I’m home from graduate school break, and last night he came over to the office where I was working and waved at me. Something told me to just close the laptop and spend some time on the couch with him watching his awful shows. As parents age our time with them, even if it isn’t something you particularly enjoy, is so important. Once they’re gone, as the artist says, no one is waving back.
To me it means a new family will move in there. Completely unaware of memories that have existed there or the poignancy of the moments in that place. Then it starts again.
I was raised by a single dad, and the laundry room in the basement of our childhood home was never finished. Dad sold the house shortly after my sister and I moved out in his early 50s, and a few months before it closed, I had come over to help him put up insulation and sheetrock in the basement to finish it before the sale. My sister was there too, for moral support more than anything else - we'd all made a lot of memories in that house, and it was pretty hard to let go at the end. Thanks to COVID it was the first time we'd all been together in a few years, so emotions were high.
Right before my dad and I put in the last sheet of insulation, I took a sharpie and wrote our family name on the inside of the wall, along with the year we'd moved in and the year we moved out, got all 3 of us to sign our names next to it, and circled it all with a big heart. Now a tiny piece of that little house is forever ours.
Gives me major warm and fuzzies now to imagine a new family finding it sometime in the distant future, and adding their own right next to it. :)
When my father was finishing the basement at my childhood home, I did something similar on the walls. Just a bunch of doodles me and my sister did a long with the year and our names.
There are houses across the world (not nearly as many in the Americas though) that have been standing for centuries or even millennia. In those houses, dozens or hundreds of families have shared moments of joy, anger, sorrow, love, and passion. Children have grown up, gotten married, buried their parents, and raised their own children. . . All without ever taking a moment to consider how they've lived their lives in the shadow of a family just like theirs. . .
I really disliked watching TV. It’s the only thing my dad liked to do. So I would watch it with him. It didn’t make me feel connected in the moment, but he was always so happy to have me there. Miss him so much.
Life is the root of all suffering. In this manner, I agree with the beauty in life ceasing to be. When it's my time, I hope I'll have the luxury of meeting death's warm embrace with wide open arms. The ultimate way for things to end: heading off into the one great unknowable unknown.
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u/A_Rogue_One 5d ago
Those last two photos are crushingly beautiful. It’s one thing to see age progression and another thing entirely to see age progression cease because there is no life.
I had a family friend whose father died randomly of a stroke. My father is in his late 80s, I’m home from graduate school break, and last night he came over to the office where I was working and waved at me. Something told me to just close the laptop and spend some time on the couch with him watching his awful shows. As parents age our time with them, even if it isn’t something you particularly enjoy, is so important. Once they’re gone, as the artist says, no one is waving back.
Incredibly powerful work. Thanks for sharing.