"Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven." ~Tryon Edwards

Me, almost 4 years old, walking one of our piglets on a leash. This was very frustrating for me and I tended to cry a lot when they wouldn't walk in the same direction I wanted them to go. My dad in the background with his favorite red tractor. The building in the distance where my siblings and I used to play basketball has since been torn down.

My grandpa and I when I was 2 years old. Grandpa gave the best hugs. We watched Flipper and Lassie when I would visit him and my grandma and we would play catch with a big blue rubber ball. I was his "Sammy."

Grandpa and my dad at a cousin's wedding less than a year before his passing in '94. They always talked so intently with one another, even at family events.

Grandpa (above) and my grandma and me, 3 years old, next to one of the buildings on the farm that we were starting to take down. My grandma grew up on this farm and was actually born in the room that is now our downstairs office.

My grandpa on the tractor (that still sits in our upstairs barn) pulling my dad as a child (around 1957) on the snow-covered farm. The same silo remains, the barn has been redone since then and the windmill removed. Also, many of the trees have been cut down.

"Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven." ~Tryon Edwards

I'm posting more photos from family albums to help contextualize where my project seems to be taking me next.

I was watching some family videos at home when my dad came in from working outside. Normally nothing catches his attention in the house other than ice cream, as he rarely comes into the living room, but he heard the laughter and identified his own booming voice coming from the TV.

The video was of my siblings combined birthday party in May of 1990 (My brother Jacob's 9th and my sister Katie's 6th -- they flipped the number shaped cake around for each). We were only able to rent the massive video recorder for the weekend because it was too expensive to buy one, but I'm glad that we have a few videos from these early years.

The clips cut off right after family and friends dressed in horizontal striped shirts (that was the style then) got done singing and Katie and Jake blew out their candles. The next scene shoots right to gift opening...and I think someone just set the camera down during this expanse of time because it never moved.

My dad had been resting his palms on the back of the recliner I was sitting on. Because he's always around outside in the dirt and oil, the cracks and grooves in his hands have always been stained black, and I know my mom doesn't usually let him come into the living room without first taking off his shoes and washing up, but as he walked in my mom never stopped him. I think she was aware of what videos I had on in the other room as she knows how much he cherishes them.

I could hear him still breathing heavily and then as the video still showed my siblings opening up gift after gift I heard him clear his throat and his shoes slowly squeak in the other direction. After having his two-minute rest he was ready to go back into the heat and start working again. But then I skipped ahead to the next scene, and it was of my dad's tractor engine revving in a field. That grabbed his attention.

Dad came back in the living room and took off his cap this time, wiping his brow, but still not choosing to sit down to watch -- to do something like that in the middle of the day would be admitting defeat in his mind. But because he was standing it was acceptable to him.

The video showed my dad working up the fields, then stopped and immediately we were all inside of our barn, which housed many pigs at the time. As I said earlier, we didn't take these few weekends with the video camera for granted. My mom was behind the camera now (I was strapped to her back with a little white bonnet on - not quite 1 year old yet) and wanted to give a tour of the farm -- my dad leading the way. Jacob was wandering around aimlessly, busy staring incessantly at his new hand held video game that he had just got for his birthday (the first of many: he's nearly 30 and he still is addicted to video games) and Katie was running through the aisle of the barn and picked up the first baby pig she saw, mostly likely tearing it away from its mother as they nursed.

Mom scolded Katie as she held it up in front of her: "Oh, Katie, not with your nice new clothes on!" But Katie's gap-toothed smile erased any possible fault and Dad went near her to explain to the camera when these pigs were born, how many, what number litter it was for this particular sow, etc. He continued to give facts about each sow down this line and moved into the back of the barn to tell the number of, average weight, and age of geldings in lower and upper contained pens which he was proud to have constructed himself what would have been just a short while ago.

I turned around and looked up at my dad as a few short laughs had escaped him when Katie was chasing two little pigs that had gotten out of their crates. He didn't notice me looking at him, and though he showed a faded expression of this laughter, his eyes were glassy and he was mesmerized by the screen -- the memory of that day -- as if it were yesterday. Then I asked him, "Dad, do you miss having the pigs on the farm?" This question snapped him out of his daze, but he didn't even meet my eyes when he quietly answered and nodded his head, "yes."

That was the first time I ever asked him that question. In my mind I always thought that he loved what he did now - landscaping in the summer, snow plowing in the winter. But I could tell how connected he was with these living breathing animals. And from other videos I later watched, the pigs and the fields and the farm were the connection between him and his father. That is what they talked about on every video we have of the two of them together. One video of grandpa, Gerhard (this would be my grandma Ada's husband from my last photo project), coming to visit the farm the day after the birthday showed him asking my dad, "did you go out and check on the pigs yet?" Dad would say that he had and explain exactly what had happened that morning or the night before. They would continue to talk about the farm, and there was something in the tone of my dad's voice and his demeanor that I rarely hear or see anymore.

As I showed with the last photos, he would sit down at the kitchen table and read the newspaper leisurely. He smiled more. He laughed more, and his voice showed much less tension. He has always been a very loud talker, but there wasn't any trace of annoyance or frustration. He seemed genuinely happy and fulfilled. The way he spoke to my mom was kind and gentle as well.

In the years since that video, we sold all of the pigs in 1994, and most of our neighbors followed suit as the prices plummeted. This was shortly following my grandpa's death from cancer around Easter that year. We then rented our land for our neighbor to work up, and later in '94 my dad took over a landscaping business from our other neighbor. I was only 4 at the time, so my familiarity with life with the pigs, tractors, and my dad before my grandpa died was limited.

But when I asked my mom about this, she was adamant: Your father has changed since grandpa died. He has never been the same. It's been a very big strain on our marriage and the business.

I then asked her why his death hit my dad so hard when my mom had lost her dad from cancer a few years before I was even born. She said that growing up her and her father were also very close, but my dad and his father were always working together and created a different kind of bond. Grandpa was my dad's best friend in a way, someone he looked up to and counted on for advice. And when he passed, my dad never had someone to fill that void.

My parents don't hang out with friends like many other people do. They are each other's world. Their families and a religious life are their world. Our two neighbors are the closest friends they have - having known them since they were children as well. It is a different kind of life, one that I am more unfamiliar with. Sure, I would consider my neighbors kids my best friends, but that was up until high school when we went our own separate ways. I don't see myself living across the road from them when I start my own family.

These two events, my dad pretty much forced to give up the workings of his farm, and the passing of my grandpa, have shaped him forever.

I asked my dad if he thought about getting some pigs back on the farm, and he said that he has but that it would be awhile before that happened.

I want to continue exploring these relationships and their impact on my dad, and how that has changed our family life as well. That is why these photos and videos before '94 are so valuable to us: they showed a life completely different yet one that shaped our lives today.

After the scene in the barn, my dad continued to work up the fields (we are situated on 100 acres, 1/4 of which is woods, some marsh area, and mainly open fields) and my mom gave a tour of the path that was made to walk through the woods.

That path has since been overgrown with sharp thorns and weeds. Ironically that is how I sometimes envision my dad's heart: to have grown wild.