Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad

I am not really a photograph person. The photographs I take come out fuzzy, with fingers in the viewfinder and missing heads or limbs, the photographs I like are simple, of other people, and don't usually involve smiles.

I do take mental snapshots though. The old man with the bandage that looked like old greaseproof paper on his cheek who was going in for cancer surgery, and after years in the army didn't have a family or anyone to miss him if he died. The old man I met in the train station when his train had been cancelled, who used to take the train with his wife, but she died of a brain haemorrhage, leaving him alone with a travel pass and arthritis. The old man who stopped me in a shop to thank me for smiling at him, because it had been over a year since anyone had smiled at him, not to mention treating him with dignity.

I collect sad old men who have sad old stories that make me cry. I have a lump in my throat thinking about those men who saw something in my big stupid face with it's little polite smile that made them feel less like they were alone in a sea of people who had infinite better things to do than acknowledge that they existed.

These snapshots make me sad, but they make me angry too. I remember coming from a village that cared about its inhabitants. I remember other villages being the same. These men I met were all in Dublin, but they all had a similar story. They were old, alone and scared about what would happen tomorrow because nobody wanted them anymore. I'd hate to think that'll happen to me too.