the process of remembering: a photoblog by andrew huth

This past weekend my grandparent’s did something pretty amazing. They celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary with their friends and family. I have this memory as a 12 year old thinking that people in their thirties were pretty old people who have pretty much seen and done all there really is to do in this world and were for the most part on auto pilot. I recall thinking that I needed to finish being the astronaut, doctor, teacher, artist, professional athlete, and writer that I was convince I would be before I got to be that old, which to me seemed a million years away.

When I think about this now, it seems strange to me that I would have felt this way considering the people that were around me were pretty interesting old folks. My grandparent’s, in my estimation at that time, were old enough that I thought they ought to be included in the history books, with all the other neat stories, that I read in school. Stories such as eating sparrow soup that my grandfather’s mother killed using a stone with only bread and ketchup during the Great Depression and trying to get my grandmother to notice him on the train she took to work everyday by attempting to trip her with his feet (for the record, my grandmother doesn’t remember my grandfather on the train, regardless of his extreme tactics, until they were formally introduced by a friend). Stories of them driving to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon knowing they had only enough gas to get there during the gas rationing days and being blessed with their last child while they were in their forties are still being told to this day.

Now, with my own life reaching thirty years (an age that I once thought was so far away) I have come to realize that my grandparent’s lives and their love for each other was and is anything but the stuff of static dusty old books. No, their lives are deeply rooted in the present, filled with car trips to Florida each year, taking up folk painting, holding hands in the back seat of a car while their grandchildren and children drive them, reading books on the sands of Plummerville, and fishing at Heart’s Ease among countless other things.

Nearing their nineties now, their lives naturally have slowed as all things must. Yet, as I framed these pictures of my grandmother while listening to the sound of my grandfather’s voice telling a seemingly serious story with a hand on her shoulder, I found myself laughing when I realized, along with everyone else, that my grandfather had been telling us a joke all along. Slowed perhaps, but not without a measure of joy and tenderness to guide them along the way.

Married for 65 years and my grandfather still lovingly touches my grandmother’s shoulders when he talks. Married for 65 years and my grandmother still laughs at my grandfather’s tomfoolery. Amazing.

My life is just beginning.