as i looked at them, i wondered what they thought of the times in which they were living out their autumn years. i wondered what kinds of impressions the things they had seen and lived through made on their minds. if they were indeed in their eighties when i saw them, they would have been born in a free country. they were growing up without electricity or running water, traveling on dirt roads on foot or in a horse-pulled wagon. their youth passed unnoticed in the tumult of a horrible war, which was followed by post-war destitution and famine, then the poverty and terror of communism, accompanied by the slow entrance of modern conveniences. for decades all they knew were the joys and hardships of simple farmer's life until the sudden political and economic transformation of the early 1990s, paved roads, increasing automobile traffic, farming machinery, a flood of commercial goods and technology.
they will die in a free country - probably seemingly more prosperous than the one they were born in. i wondered, though, whether they could see the poverty of this prosperity, the emptiness of this abundance. i wondered how much the past burdened them and whether they were longing for it, or perhaps had learned to make the best of whatever circumstances they found themselves in. and had they even once heard of the abounding, fulfilling, forgiving love of God... i thought about the incredible resilience of man, about how much we can live through, and still go on. the generation of my grandparents. what a life.
