This Time to Cry Tuesday finds me retelling a story that I heard last week. I was at a photo shoot, working with this group for the first time. It was one of those perfect work days where all the planning worked out, the team was incredibly talented and they were all truly warm interesting people.
We broke for lunch and were chatting about this and that, when the prop stylist shared this story with us. She had heard it, of all places, from the Russian women where she gets her facials!
The story begins with a couple planning their wedding. There was a dinner for the extended families to meet. The grandmother of the bride and the grandfather of the groom were both Holocaust survivors. They got to talking and each discovered that the other was a survivor. They talked about carrying the tattoos of the camps throughout their lives as a reminder. The woman states her number and then the man recites his.
She stops cold.
“That could not possibly be your number”, she said.
“Of course it is my number, how could I make a mistake about something that I see everyday of my life. Why would you say it was not my number?” he replied.
“Because…” , she begins, “THAT was my husband’s number and I lost him in the camps.”
The room becomes silent as the two realize that after all these years – having survived, moved to the states, married others thinking that each had perished, built families and lives – they are reunited.
Some story, right?
As the stylist told the story she began to tear up. As did I. And everyone else in the room. In this work environment we all shared this unbelievable moment. We came to the conclusion that in the big picture of life these two had lost each other so long ago because their grandchildren-to-be were meant…
to be.
I love a good story of fatalism.
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i could cry but i don't have time 