Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The Picture I Could Take, The Pictures I Couldn't


The children looked old enough to be grandparents but each face was a younger mirror of the elderly person clinging to their arm. There was no way I could ask to take a picture ...

...the tall patrician woman with her equally independent mother,no matter how she tried, now unable to walk a few steps without help,

...the man, still looking like an eight year old, but now encased in middle aged weight and wear and tear, his mother now tinier, more frightened than he ever was sitting next to each other her feet not touching the floor.

... the man, sitting alone, maybe didn't have children or did but they didn't know that thousand of miles away his comfort was the hellos of the nursing staff who knew him well and asked how his day was as he waited to be seen.