By David Stenhouse

There’s a scene in Band of Brothers where Donnie Wahlberg’s character, Lipton, is sitting in a church and thinking about the men around him that have been lost since their entrance into the war. The unit had dropped into Normandy, fighting through France and Belgium, successfully capturing the town of Foy. The scene shows men slowly disappearing as Lipton is describing their loss.

That is exactly where I am right now. Everyone experiences this if they live long enough—The world in which I grew up no longer exists. Just memories.

My grandfather, George Stenhouse (“Grandad”), Washington Governor Booth Gardner, and Carol Stenhouse, attending the March 1992 Washington State Patrol Academy graduation.

I recently lost my Dad to Lewey Body Dementia. The family had lost our Mom to cancer in 2004. And then, 20 years later watched our Dad fade physically and mentally. Reality has made me accept that the two people responsible for raising and sending me out into this world, disintegrated right in front of me. Now, I navigate life’s battlefront with my wife, Shay. Because we’re both from the same small town and have known each other since high school, we’ve experienced many pivotal life events together.

Memories are unnoticed at the time of their creation. While life has us plan for the big events, many slip by unnoticed, popping up in photographs years later. The important ones didn’t seem so important when they happened. Shay recalls occurrences from 20 years ago that I don’t remember, though I’ll know exactly what I was doing for my work at that time. That may seem sad, yet that work brought us to where we are now financially. It’s a conundrum.

George and Mike Stenhouse building a covered deck at 111 Lookout Way, Chelan, Washington, during the early 1980s. My home through college.

Time doesn’t stop. We each join the freeway at an on-ramp, travel for a while, and then take an off-ramp. The roadway keeps going. I see buildings being constructed that I know will be there long after I am gone. I see kids that are just starting their lives, not even in kindergarten. They have so much ahead of them. It’s humbling knowing my contribution to this world is so small and at least half over. With most of my career life behind me, the reality of it all sinks in. What one does throughout their life: the money made, the objects purchased, the successes, the failures, and so on, doesn’t matter in the end. The only luggage we take with us when leaving this world is our faith in where we’re headed and the relationships we created in past.

One would think I was in my 80s with these thoughts, but I am in my mid-50s as I write this. A time in my life where I am surveying the current surroundings. Situational awareness is revealing a fortress being assaulted from every angle. Time’s passing ensures I feel that.

Enjoying the Lake Chelan Shores floating dock in the early 1980s with Jim Ellis, Teri Ellis, and Mom. Photo by George Stenhouse.

I talk with clients, young professionals in their 30s, and during those moments I will view us as the same age. We’re not. I get confused on where I am sitting in life’s timeline. I live as if in my 30s, still playing slo-pitch softball, going for runs, hanging out at coffee shops and the race track, throwing on a pair of tennis shoes, jeans, t-shirt, and a baseball cap.

I’m not in my 30s. My daughter is. That’s reality and I catch myself denying life’s inevitability. It has been over 50 years of life changes thus far. Let’s hope I learn from the past and apply it to the future.

I barely remember our family farm in Graham, Washington, but I see the photos. That’s where I spent the first few years of my life. We then moved to Tigard, Oregon, living in a nice Bull Mountain home while my Dad worked for Kraft Foods. Later moving a few miles to Walnut Street where our house sat right behind my grade school. And finally moving to Chelan, Washington where my foundation was formed.

As the youngest, I watched my Dad, Mom, and siblings run a small resort and then own 20 acres of apple orchards that my brother managed in nearby Manson. My parents and brother built the house I lived in from 5th grade through college. Nothing but work, toil, good times and bad. But a lot of work.

1987 Chelan High School Baccalaureate service at the United Methodist Church in Chelan. Photo by George Stenhouse.

My sibling and I built our own families. The good times and bad times with this group have been captured in photographs and video, some of which I will pull out to reminisce. We all married very young and experienced much of life in our 20s and 30s. Now, nephews and nieces, along with their own families, have moved away, scattered across the U.S.. People have come and gone. The family slowly grows apart and we all move on with our lives.

All of those memories fading away. Each day that passes puts me farther away from the moments. I just didn’t see it at the time. I took for granted my young health, the years of life ahead, and the people around me. I believe this is normal human behavior. But when one starts losing the people and the life that once was, one notices the fading is accelerating.

Maybe this is why I enjoy photography so much?—preserving events while they are present, knowing the moment is going to vanish to be forgotten without the documentation. I refuse to dispose of my Dad’s 35mm slide collection even though I have digitally converted it. The slides themselves are remnants of a sliver in time. That little piece of 35mm film was right there along with him when the photo was snapped. It did the work to preserve a memory. I cannot toss its efforts aside.

Holding onto these fragments connects me to the past, preserving moments to revive when desired.

Carrying around a camera since childhood, David Stenhouse has a love for capturing people, machines, and America. A former Special Agent in the U. S. Secret Service and Trooper with the Washington State Patrol, he is now so blessed to spend each day running a business with his best friend, high school sweetheart, and wife, Shay.

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