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About a month ago I spent an evening and a morning with my grandparents. Their daughter and son-in-law live with them and care for them. This was a hard trip for me for two main reasons, I think.
One, I usually just see my grandparents at Thanksgiving, Christmas, the occasional family lunch, etc. I think it’s easy for anyone to fake it for a meal. Or an hour or two. On the days I spent with them, I saw how confused my granddad is, saw him have his face cleaned for him, watched him get dressed under his daughter’s supervision, saw him fall asleep sitting up at 8:30 in the morning just because he was bored.
So I saw the messy, awkward behind the scenes stuff.
I also had to be able to dissociate myself from them as family, and just be a journalist; tell their story. I want to do the careful balancing act of being a journalist and being a human, and this was a good test. It seems kind of backwards, but I think I was better able to honor my aging grandparents by being more of a journalist than a grandson, at least for those 6 or 7 hours.
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I like what you had to say about the balance between a journalist and a human. at what point do you run into a burning house to save a someone instead of photographing the house in flames.
Comment by jonny carroll April 6, 2008 @ 9:26 pm