My Grandfather

My grandfather looked like Gregory Peck. Despite spending more of his life behind the camera than in front of it, he was very photogenic. He had an intensity to his eyes which my dad and I both inherited, a serious look which could turn into a smile at any moment. Even as he grew old and stooped, my grandfather was impressively tall; between him and my great-uncle, my dad- at 6'2- is the shortest of the Wengenroth men. Go figure.

But what is there really to say, and where do I start? How do I describe someone who I loved so much and only knew for a mere third of his entire life anyway? How do I capture his memory in a way that keeps it fresh and sweet in my heart as I myself grow older? For nearly a month, I have held off on truly and fully gathering my thoughts on the sad and inevitable passing of my grandfather; my dad's dad. I didn't post it on Facebook as a status update because I felt like it would cheapen his memory to do so. People can announce the births of their children in such a manner, but I wanted this moment as something real and not a virtual snippet of information in cyberspace. In fact, I didn't talk about it much to anyone except close friends and my family. And my family didn't even really talk much about it until this weekend, when we all gathered in Florida on a beautiful sunny day to commemorate him and celebrate the life he had.

Even as I write this, the winter sun is dropping lower in the sky and I feel slightly ashamed to miss it, but after all, it's 40 degrees here anyway; who am I kidding? In longing for summer, I am reminded of the steamy July day that a thunderstorm struck Brooklyn while I was at the beach, and the quality of the light was so breathtaking, that I went all the way back home to grab my camera…and all the way back to the beach, practically throwing myself onto the sand in my haste to catch the light before it was gone. As the sun set, the sky turned a bloody orange smudged with ominous gray, the clouds rolled in, and the water churned as it began to rain lightly, casting the world in a shimmering mist. I ran to a bodega to get batteries (my older digital camera required a whopping eight AA batteries!) and headed towards Coney Island, snapping photos the whole time. I was so caught up in the rush of capturing a beautiful image, in the pleasure of seeing, that before I knew it, the sun had set and it was dark. I stared at Astroland Park in the darkness, looking so picturesque and timeless. I sent an excited email to my grandfather, describing my photographic expedition and enclosing an amount of photos which probably crashed his browser.

His response is one of my fondest memories of him because to me, it sums up his character so well and it was one of the things I loved; not only was he supportive of my interest in photography, but he was a gracious and helpful critic. "I particularly like the Astroland Park photos," he wrote, "the quality of the light is beautiful. But have you thought about getting a tripod?" In my excitement, there were a few shots which had a slightly Dutch angle to them. But with a little Photoshop tweaking, they were perfect. This was what Grandpa and I shared; a love for chocolate (which I'm convinced is genetic, as my dad inherited it too!) and for the streets of Brooklyn, and a love for photography...a need to capture an image, to preserve a moment in time.

How strange to look at photos he took, and photos of him, when time has run out and he has passed on, but not before leaving- as the Longfellow poem says- footprints in the sands of time. I remember going to a photography expo with him in Boston, where he bought me my 35mm camera so I could take a photography class in high school. It's a Canon FTB and I still have it. Unfortunately, it's notorious for a faulty shutter and the last roll I shot came out with a hard black line obscuring half the frame. But that camera and I got along quite well, and it still sits on a shelf in my apartment; people can kill off film all they want, but that camera is mine forever. During that same time, I remember watching him work in his darkroom at the house on Culver Lake, first developing and then printing stunning color photographs. I felt so privileged to be included in the Wengenroth circle of creative, hard-working engineers, thinkers, and artists, awe-struck as I watched Grandpa work patiently and carefully to craft these images. I would stand in the hallway of the house at the Lake and just stare at his photographs, from a portrait of my Nana's cat Lulu ( she definitely missed her calling to be in a cat calendar…) to stunning panoramic shots of the lake and the woods.

As if watching a slide show in my mind's eye, I flip back a bit further, and I'm reminded of all the time we would always spend outside, whether at Culver Lake, in Stoke State Forest, or up at Mohonk…such a part of my family's history that when I took a trip to Mohonk by myself for a film shoot a few years ago, I found myself expecting to see them hiking along the trails beside me. The house at Culver Lake was not just any house, you see. My grandfather built that house. It wasn't until I began getting a sense of the work my dad does (my dad "flips houses" to use the trendy phrase), that I fully understood how incredible it is that my grandfather built that house for his family. Of course now, the Lake has changed and grown into McMansions and tastelessness, and the house was torn down. I was enraged and devastated when I found out; how could something so precious be ended, just like that?

And yet, that's how it was. Grandpa turned 90 in September and was greeted with a compilation of family memories, written by everyone in the Wengenroth clan. His health had seriously declined in the past few years, as COPD and an aneurysm in his stomach seemed to be in a race to the finish. As was typical of his generation, he dealt with the inconveniences of old age and sickness, by…well, by just dealing with it. "Well, actually, I'm bored," he said to me when I asked how he was doing. "I can't really take photos much anymore, so now I just look at them." I remember feeling furious and sad with the world on the day that I called him from my new smartphone and he couldn't hear me because the audio quality is just not as good as it is a regular phone. Somehow, that was the moment when he truly seemed old to me, despite the fact that he'd had hearing aids for quite some time (being too close to a gunshot blast in the Navy will do that to you). I employed Nana as my translator and followed up with an email. I hung up with a lump in my throat. I was in my 20's, he was in his 80's, and all of a sudden, just like that, time was ticking.

When I walked into the church yesterday and saw a photograph of him, smiling with kind eyes and looking surprisingly radiant for such an old man, I thought to myself, "What a perfect photo of him." When I saw the simple wooden box containing his ashes, I thought to myself, "What a perfect box for him." And then when I saw the American flag, folded into a triangle and placed in a glass case, that was when my eyes blurred, my throat closed up, and I broke out in a sweat as I tried- in some ridiculous attempt to be calm and level-headed - not to cry. Even as my eye makeup ran down my face and my entire body tensed trying to hold in the tears, I wanted to unclench my jaw and just sob without abandon at the gaping sense of loss I felt for my family. Because when I saw that flag, that was when it hit me that he had lived such a full and long life, of which I should have learned more. I thought of all the things I wanted to ask him about that will now go unanswered. I was struck by this absurdly childish and profound realization that my grandfather was once a cute guy in the Navy, a gangly young man with big ears and a big nose, that my grandfather was once a boy building model airplanes in Flatbush, Brooklyn, probably a twenty-minute walk from where I live now. Something about those faded stars folded into that familiar triangle, knocked my grandfather's life into a perspective which I had rarely considered; the entire thing. I thought how incredible it was that he served his country, that he survived the turmoil of his wife's untimely death at age 43 and the merging of two families upon his remarriage to my Nana (it was like the Brady Bunch only more interesting), that he built a house for his family, that he created beautiful things. He was an artist and an engineer and a woodworker and a photographer and a little boy riding the Cyclone at Coney Island. He was standing on the roof of the house at Culver Lake putting on the finishing touches. He was carefully sanding the wooden bowl which sits on my dresser filled with shells from all the beaches I've been to. He was a cornerstone of my childhood and my brother's childhood, part of a symmetry of our family, a force in my life who gave me a way to express myself as a teenager.

My uncles and my dad got up to speak. My uncle Dan spoke of the time that the family dog went off into the cold woods to have her puppies one night, and how Grandpa went out and brought them all back safe and sound. My uncle Phil spoke of how he was the black sheep, yet when he went to grad school, he saw a pride in Grandpa's eyes that he will never forget. My great-uncle Dick spoke of their childhood together. I pictured two little boys jumping on the bed in a little house in Flatbush, whacking each other with pillows while meanwhile, the country was in the grips of the Depression. I pictured Grandpa as a boy working painstakingly on model airplanes. Dick reminisced about their boyhood summers at Culver Lake, then the winter ice-skating and playing in the snow. Then his voice broke as he said softly, "I am so grateful for those memories." My dad was more uplifting than I thought he would be, speaking of the importance of remembering a person's spirit even after they have passed on. We recited the Lord's Prayer, sang a traditional Navy hymn, and that was that. We went out to the courtyard and talked, hugged, laughed, and cried in the dazzling Florida sun. Even Nana was able to joke and smile amidst her grief; maybe that's how you get through it all. We went to the beach and walked down to the pier, leaving our own footprints in the sand, collecting shells. We talked of scattering Grandpa's ashes at Culver Lake. I stared at the ocean and wished I'd had my camera. I remembered visiting Grandpa and Nana the first year they moved down to Vero Beach and being astonished at the size and boldness of the pelicans, who seemed to pose for me as I snapped photos with my camera. Grandpa was like a human light meter; I got some great shots that day thanks to his expert eyes.

Because I had no camera yesterday, I took a picture in my mind of the bright sun, the turquoise water, the colorful shells, my cousins, brother, and parents as they walked along the shore. I watched my dad as he walked and recognized the same set of his shoulders that Grandpa had, the same thoughtfulness to his voice when he speaks, the same ears, the same eye for detail and careful hands crafting paintings, photos, and architecture…all of these things like tiny echoes of Grandpa and of our family…some of which I've also inherited. As the sun sets outside my tiny Brooklyn apartment a stone's throw from the neighborhood that my great-grandfather helped to develop (unfortunately, some of it has become the border of Bed-Stuy, but just like the realtors around here, I try to gloss over that), I feel a twinge of sadness that Grandpa will not see the way the bare, black trees frame the colors in the sky. But then I think of how lucky he was to have such a beautiful life…and how lucky I am to have such an amazing family…and because there are some things that even a photo can't capture, I sit quietly and just look.