.:almost ninety:.

I was reminded today again how fleeting life can be. I get to visit semi-frequently a senior community here in town that my company owns. I attended a photoshoot there in January which consisted of six ladies and one onery old man. The property manager e-mailed me today and told me that the man from the shoot was recently diagnosed with advanced cancer and was told he had seven months to live. He tried a round of chemo but after the first visit made his 84-year-old body a little too sick, he decided he had had a good life and it was just time to leave this one. Friends and family don't expect him to live past next month and as I delivered a gift today to he and the others involved in the photoshoot I walked up to their apartment door and saw a sign his wife had written, "Visitors Welcome". I literally stopped walking when I saw it. It reminded me how important other people and their friendship are at all stages of life. Even moreso probably when we are at the end of it.

When I was little I remember overhearing my grandmother making remarks about how she pitied those that lived into their 80s because their quality of life was so bad. Well, here we are today--she'll be 90 in September. I did a quick shoot of her and her eight children this past Sunday so that they could replace the last photo taken of the whole family 17 years ago. As we were enjoying the breakfast casserole and fruit a few of my aunts had brought for all of us we suddenly realized that I hadn't taken any pictures of Grandma by herself.

I asked Grandma if I could take her picture somewhere by a window as my flash batteries for some reason had drained themselves. I suggested she go to her bedroom and sit on her bed. I had this photojournalistic image of her sitting on her quilt on the edge of the bed and looking towards the window. The perfect balance of the dark room with the light window and her looking off towards the future, which was still bright. I patiently followed as she slowly wobbled across the house and when I offered to go find her cane to help her, she politely put me in my place and told me that she doesn't use a cane in the house.

I pulled up all the blinds in her bedroom but still there wasn't enough light to satisfy me. I started messing with my camera settings when my grandmother said "Malry, I'm gonna go sit on my stool in front of my quilt. That'd make a nice picture." It surprised the heck out of me because I'm not sure I ever thought Grandma thought about pictures let alone cared what they looked like. Perfect idea! So here she is in all of her eighty-nine-almost-ninety-year-old glory in front of the quilt the family put together for her 80th birthday.

If you know Grandma you will know that she, like many of the older generation, is stonefaced a vast majority of the time and getting a photo of her smiling let alone laughing is a pretty difficult task. I took this one right after she started laughing a little and said, "Malry, why are you taking so many pictures if you just need one?" I smiled as I captured this and told her, "Grandma, to make sure I got just the right photo." I think this is it.