I could not have picked a sappier title for this entry about my dead grandfather and various other members of the family that have long passed. It’s just how I roll. You need sappy, I GOT IT. Also, this is not a sad entry. For the most part.

See, I visited my grandmother on Monday because I hadn’t seen her since Christmas and she wanted to show me some old pictures of close family and have me take them home so they wouldn’t be thrown out some day. Coincidentally, I had been thinking about my grandfather – her husband – a lot lately, though I couldn’t say what brought that on. His name was Paul, and he died of a kidney disease when I was only five.

I don’t remember him: I don’t remember talking with him or anything he ever said to me or whether he played a lot with us kids. But I know things about him – from pictures, and stories, and memories blurred to distortion. I know that he loved Humphrey Bogart (and instilled that love into my mom who then passed it on to me) and at a time when that kind of thing was not common at all in Germany, he watched American movies in their original versions and listened to jazz and blues and you would never see him not smoking a cigarette or a cigar and he was quiet and embodied dry humor and he was a family guy and a man of mystery at the same time.

This is him way before me or my mom (one of his four kids, in case that wasn’t clear) were even alive, in 1956. Though my grandmother may already have been pregnant with my mom around this time! But, man, his suit and his hair and the old train in the background: it’s all so atmospheric. (He sent this to my grandmother from his travels, by the way; there’s a short, sweet note written on the back.)

These two were taken about four years later. It’s him and my mom. I can’t even tell you how much I love the second one. It’s one of my favorite pictures ever. Everything about it makes my heart melt. I wish there were far more pictures of my grandfather than there are; and selfishly, I wish there was one that had me and him both in it – one that showed that I was not just one among the other grandkids, but an actual little person THAT HE LIKED. Heh.

There are other pictures my grandma showed me on Monday. Ones that go back farther, and are proof of the awesomeness of photography. (They’re also proof of how much today’s shoot-and-point digital photography sucks, by comparison. But that’s another point entirely.)

This is Paul’s mother as a young woman. Taken in 1918. I don’t even know what to say about this. I never met her although she was of course my great-grandmother. This picture is so- so fantastic and so frightening.

Dude. This one’s one of the best. That little girl holding the doll is Paul’s mother as a little girl. Those stiff folk in the back are her family, obviously. This was taken circa 1905, so ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE YEARS AGO. Just- amazing. I can’t get over the fact that this was her family, this is how she grew up and that, years later, she would have my mom – who’d turn out a rebel of the 60s – for a granddaughter. THINGS CHANGE SO FAST, and then also not very fast at all.

This one was taken in 1926. Thing is, this woman was evidently a part of our family but no one has a clue who she is. Makes this photograph all the more special. It’s the only proof, I guess, that she ever walked and breathed on this earth.

This is my grandfather again, in ‘63. There are almost no pictures of him as an older man. No pictures of him actually looking like a grandfather. But then, I like these older pictures of him much better, anyway. To only have black-and-white pictures of him from the 40s, 50s, 60s, sharp-looking and chain-smoking: it adds mystery. But I hate that he is not around now. I would love to meet him.