{"id":2185,"date":"2009-09-07T23:58:28","date_gmt":"2009-09-07T21:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/?p=2185"},"modified":"2009-09-07T23:58:28","modified_gmt":"2009-09-07T21:58:28","slug":"well-fuck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/well-fuck\/","title":{"rendered":"Well fuck.<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago I was working on a photo series of my extended family; Uncles, cousins and all the extra personnel<\/em> a family aquires over time. With the omission of a grandfather I got all of them except my maternal grandmother. She was complaining about being too old and ugly to be in a picture, and that she’d rather we remember her by the pictures from back when she was still an imposing matron \u2013\u00a0with keen eyes and a barking laugh \u2013\u00a0rather than this old woman of waning health.<\/p>\n

I ended up taking a picture of the blanket that would have been the backdrop to her portrait, to make sure that she’d have a place in the finished work.<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago she’s still be up and about, occasionally leaving apartment where she’d moved in with her daughter. My mom got her an articulated bed to make getting up easier, but after a while she couldn’t manage that by herself and required full time help.<\/p>\n

She’s had arthritis for a long time, and with other illnesses that accompany old age she’d become sickly. The last couple of times my mom came back from visiting Poland, she’s been upset at the amount of pain and suffering that her mother was experiencing, and the inability for anyone to alleviate it.<\/p>\n

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Grandma died early this morning and we’re looking at ways of getting to the funeral. I haven’t been to Poland for a while, but it’s becoming a bad habit of going for shitty reasons. It’s hard to figure out how to feel about her death; About the unfairness of suffering, of dying and of being left behind, living. There were no things left unsaid nor any promises left hanging, but still there is a void.<\/p>\n

She’d talk of her experiences during the second world war, of being imprisoned in a German camp, of losing everything and starting anew in Sanok. She spoke of the house her family used to have, of her time as a hospital nurse, of when lightning struck a pole not ten metres away. If she had any misgivings about her kids or grand-kids it was that none of us had become a lawyer or a doctor \u2013 careers worth pursuing and sure signs of intelligence and character – and more than once she’d admonish me for using my talent for arguing on her instead of making a career out of it.<\/p>\n

She was tolerant and had an open mind, but took no shit and for as long as she had the faculties of movement she’d pull your ear if you were being stupid. My habit of saying “meh” came from her, but where I might be detached and distant, she had an explosive pronounciation which made it carry so much more meaning. “Bah! Meh! Humbug! Don’t say stupid things!”<\/p>\n

Even though she will be missed, I don’t begrudge her a release from the endless suffering she lived with for the past years. No matter how much we’d wish it wasn’t the case, death is sometimes still our only remedy.<\/p>\n

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A couple of years ago I was working on a photo series of my extended family; Uncles, cousins and all the extra personnel a family aquires over time. With the omission of a grandfather I got all of them except my maternal grandmother. She was complaining about being too old and ugly to be in … Continue reading Well fuck.<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[279],"tags":[947,97,943,942,950],"class_list":["post-2185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","tag-babcia-tylka","tag-death","tag-grandma","tag-memento-mori","tag-rip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2185"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2210,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions\/2210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monocultured.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}