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.
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
‘…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.
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.
I lost both of my parents due to Covid in late January (my Mom) and early February (my Dad) in 2021. I was 38 years old at that time and my parents were in their late 60s. They were very healthy for their age, but it didn't matter. They were gone within a month since their first Covid symptoms. I was on a different continent, international travel was hard during that time (it was still pre vaccines), I had to leave my wife with 2 young kids (6 month old and 4 year old) behind and fly back home alone in order to bury my parents. The OP talks about leaving and waving, and it's very touching. In my case, what almost broke me was the arrival at the airport (after a long 24 hour journey) and for the first time in my life there was nobody waiting and waving (I don't have any siblings). I'm still getting used to the fact that there won't be anyone waiting for me there. Fortunately, I have my own family and I'm greeted with lots of love anytime I come back to them.
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.
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 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.
Leaving and Waving
(deannadikeman.com)598 points by Duke_Pixie 12 November 2024 | 92 comments
Comments
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.
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.
>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
Don't hesitate to do the things today which will otherwise become regrets tomorrow.
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.
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, soon you may be
Prepare for death and follow me
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!
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.
[0] https://stoicismu.com/stoicism-negative-visualization/
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.
"You can't take a picture of this. It's already gone"
Thanks for sharing.
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.