Two hours of my life I'll never get back. See the cars stretching wayyyyyyy back? Yeah. That was awful.
But after that, we got to spend time with my great-uncle and great-aunt in Plymouth, MI. It was nice to catch up with them, and on our last morning in town, my great-uncle took out a stash of family photos. I am sort of obsessed with old photos--I love being able to visualize my family's past.
Some of them were the garden-variety smiling portraits of the sort I had seen at my grandfather's house as well--all of them living as displaced persons in London, gussied up in their Sunday best for a day off from the factory, grinning at the camera. Moving on, some got more interesting--a group of Polish women in Kampala, Uganda, my great-grandmother among them, smiling in the tropical setting, even though they were all refugees far from home with little idea of their future. I asked my uncle if he liked Africa, and he told me of course--it was one long summer vacation for the children. He liked shooting birds, and the only danger he remembers were the crocodiles living in Lake Victoria.
But then one picture was really shocking, and my uncle pulled it out last. My Polish relatives have long had a fondness for taking photos with corpses, which I've always found extremely creepy, but I was glad this one was documented. It was a picture at my great-grandfather's funeral, while they were living in a labor camp in Siberia, where they had been sent by the Russian government at the start of World War II. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, three of my great-uncles (one who soon after went to join General Anders to fight and was never heard from again), and a couple friends were gathered around.
And they looked like hell. Their clothes were tattered, they were clearly wearing every piece of clothing they owned to warm up in the Siberian winter, they had no hats so the women wrapped scarves around their heads. My great-grandfather looked the worst of all--perhaps to be expected, as he was dead, but how gaunt he looked! It was sobering.
I wish I had taken a digital photo of that picture because a picture really is worth a thousand words. As in, it's one thing to hear and know in your mind that your grandparents lived a hard life--and it's quite another to have a window into their lowest moment. To see my grandfather and great-uncle old now, giving advice that I roll my eyes at, humoring them--this is my world now, and they are still, in their last days, figuring out how to navigate it, never quite adjusted to the relative ease and plenty their grandchildren take for granted. But what do I know of the things they know?
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