Photographs

I never knew my grandpa's parents.

They existed to me in stories, three houses, and photos. Really just four photos. I'm sure there are more, but those four are seared into my mind and make up part of the memory I've made up for them.

Two photos are old, one is new, and one is in between. New was in 1965, the year they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, and also the year Marion died. The picture is of Marion and Agness sitting behind a cake with a top that lets us know they're at their 50th wedding anniversary celebration. It's black and white. Marion is frail and in a wheel chair, but is mustering up a sort of smile that I think is hereditary in many Lunds. It's the kind of smile where eyes and mouths don't seem to agree. Agness is still healthy, thick arms and plump cheeks.

In between is Agness posing with an organization from church. I think it was Relief Soceity. She is posed with several ladies, all smiling, and all wearing what I spent most of my life thinking were funny looking shoes, though recently seem to be getting quite fashionable again.

The old photos are of young, beautiful people. One is Marion in overalls working in the field, his field. The one I imagine Agness calling him out of for dinner. The other is of a young woman, 16, sitting in a window sill with lace curtains. Long dark hair pinned up just so. Everyone says my cousin Megan looks just like her. I agree. I thank her for my full round face.

One house is a lodge. One is a wedding house. And the last is just a normal house on a normal street. The wedding house is where Agness grew up, and where Grammy stayed with two babies while Grandpa was in WWII. The lodge is where Marion and Agness raised their family. The normal house is where they lived when Marion got old. Agness lived out her last days in a home that I lived in for 5 years. I never associated it with her at the time (it was in my second through seventh years). It was across the driveway from her daughter Nathel. Neither the place in which I grew up, the home where Nathel lived, nor the driveway are still there.

I don't feel like I'm old enough for places with so much history to have disappeared. Don't they know that places in which Agness MacDonald Lund has lived are destined to go down on historic registries?

And finally, part of them is a piece of stone with their names and dates engraved upon it. They occupy the ground in the farthest NW corner. When I was younger I took a walk through the Eagar Cemetery, where I'm related to a substantial number of residents, made my way to the far corner, stood next to the afore mentioned stone contemplating those names, and sang Angels Among Us before I left. I saw Grammy's red Taurus come through the gates. I knew she was looking for me, but she missed me, and I was in mid verse. I spent the walk back to Grandma Izzie's trying to come up with a good reason for being late.

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