It is here, in Maine, that I spent my New Year’s Eve, 2011 into 2012.  Traveling back in time, inasmuch as I traveled forward.

It was just me with my grandparents.  There are few occasions in my life where it has just been me and my grandparents.  The first time was probably around the age of 3 or 4 (or maybe it was 5), when my mom, post-divorce, flew to Hawaii with a girlfriend to “take some time,” to dance and to laugh.  I headed to New York to spend that time with my grandparents.

Later, I was in my mid-twenties, in my first career and having just passed the bar exam in the State of Washington.  My grandparents flew out to Seattle to visit.  We explored Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria Island.  I have some great memories and some great photographs from that time.  I remember they travelled with a liquor suitcase.  Yep, you got that right.  A suitcase whose only job is to carry the alcohol, the tumblers and the gear required to mix up a drink, anytime, anywhere, wherever they may be.  It was such a  ’50s thing that they carried in the ’90s.  Very kitschy.  That case now sits in my basement, carrying this memory along with it.  My grandparents no longer drink.  And, they no longer travel.

Unless it’s via ambulance from their assisted-living home/apartment to the hospital, which is the occasion that on December 31, 2011 brought me to visit them.

It’s an odd mix, the two of them.  She deteriorates mentally, yet thrives physically; him, just the opposite.  So though on any entry to their apartment, I’m not sure if my grandmother will recognize me, I can hold a very fluid and fast-moving conversation with my grandfather while he lays with tubes on the hospital bed in ICU trying to thrive with one kidney, cancer and congestive heart failure.  An odd mix and one never anticipated even ten years ago as they lived on their own in Maine, as they had for close to 15 years at that point while family went about their own lives in Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York.

It is here that I left and then arrived.

And it is here where I first witnessed the winter season of life, where life ends, amongst those unknown to you until you’re no longer capable of taking care of yourself, where life is structured only by meals and pill times, 8am, 12noon, 5pm and 7pm (pills), where caregivers give care, and where family, if they live close enough, visits.  Everything else in-between is empty space.  What once filled those spaces, whatever that may be, has been replaced.  Maybe by TV turned up to extreme decibels, maybe by staring straight into nowhere for those in-between hours.  There are no weekends.  Every day is the same day.  Every meal is dished with the same conversations, repeated over and over again.

And it is here that I think, I am quite sure I do not ever want to get here, I do not want to get this kind of old, this kind of living.  Because this kind of living feels an awful lot like dying.

A

(All images taken on my Leica M6 with my 35 Summicron; filmstock Kodak BW400CN.)