Life and Death

Lets start with a little background.... every Friday I go to my grandparent's house and we have lunch together and chat and just enjoy each other's company and if they need things fixed or worked on around their house i do it. Well last Friday I was not able to because of a death in the family. My grandmother's brother Jacob, the one she was the closest to out of her 20 siblings.... yes her parents were very buisy lol.... well he died on wednesday and they went to Southern Illinois for the Funeral that was on Friday. So I was not able to visit with them. Now this morning I am working on some prints in the darkroom at my school and get a call from my mother letting me know that two more of my grandmother's siblings died last night so my grandparents were both really having a hard time emotionally. So I did what any good grandson would do. I gave them a call and let them know i had finished doing some work on some photographs and asked if they would like to take a look and tell me what they thought. At first they were both hesitant but then decided it might be nice to think about something other than death and invited me over. Well I showed them all the work I have done this semester and they were very impressed and my grandmother got to talkin about how everyone was dying around her and yet the magnolia tree in her front bush was blooming and growing every year and was just getting to be at its brightest. So after we had talked for about two hours and had something to eat I was about to leave and we were outside by my car when I actually looked at the tree blossoming and started to talk some more about it with my grandmother..... if you can't tell by now my grandfather does not talk much lol..... well she had said how she thought it was beautiful and full of life and she wanted to bring some of that inside to cheer them up but that when she cut off a branch and put it in water it died within the day. So before anyone said anything else, i pulled out my camera and started taking pictures. when i was done we flipped through and this is the one we decided i would print and frame and they could have a little bit of life and beauty in their house to remind them that even though things die and go away, there is always new beautiful things coming into this world as well.