"Grandma, why do your veins stick out so much?"
"Because I'm old and my hands are old and they have been used and used."
I used to sit for hours next to my grandma. Feeling the veins in her hands. They were prominent and my own hands were drawn to them. Like a magnet. I couldn't help but rub my fingers across the ripples. Over and over. Feeling the crepe paper skin. Knowing those hands of my grandma's had been through it all. Knowing those hands of my grandma's would always be there to love me.
So on the night when my grandma's hands left this earthly world, I took a picture of them. I knew I wanted her hands with me forever. And when I was at home, in the middle of that same night, tired from crying, I sat down and wrote. Wrote about her hands. Because they told her story. They told of her struggles and her ability to rise and her love and her work ethic and they told of her courage. Most of all they told of her. Simply who she was. It poured out. I wrote. And to this day I miss her.
That was almost three years ago. Since then, I have continued to capture moments and write it out. When I look back through my pictures, inevitably in the middle of every event, I have taken some sort of still shot of hands. I don't consciously do it; they simply are the story. The hands tell a story. A story of our belief system. What we work for. Who we love. The scars we hold. Mountains climbed. Loss. Gain. Triumphs. The hands. They tell it all.
