A photo with a bittersweet memory!

Duchess Kate Shares Emotional Phone Call With Hold Still Finalist

Duchess Kate is learning more about the pictures she selected for her pandemic-inspired photo exhibition, Hold Still! The Duchess of Cambridge has been sharing the phone calls she's had with several of the finalists for the project, and this one saw a young woman talk about her grandparents' final days together. Find out more here!

Duchess Kate wants to share the stories behind the pictures that have been featured in her Hold Still exhibition! The Duchess of Cambridge recently shared a phone call she had with a young woman who was one of the finalists of the project, hearing all about the photo's emotional backstory.

Kate listens to finalist share grandparents' story

Kate has been uploading phone conversations with the Hold Still finalists over the past week via her and William's recently launched YouTube channel. As Hello! mentions, the conversations were recorded in the fall of 2020, and this latest chat— which saw Kate talk to a young woman named Hayley Evans about her grandparents' decades-long love— was shared on Monday.

Evans' photo is an intimate shot of her late grandparents Pat and Ron Woods together in hospital beds, titled "Forever Holding Hands". During the call, Kate said the image was "wonderful [and] very moving." Evans said the couple were married for 71 years, but Ron injured his hip and contracted COVID-19 before being hospitalized. His wife Pat then tested positive for the virus along with Evans' mother, who became their carer.

Duchess Catherine meets representatives from organizations which will benefit from a fund from their Royal Foundation on July 23, 2020.

Kate reflects on what Evans said about her grandparents' last days

Kate was emotional as she expressed her gratitude to Evans for sharing her grandparents' story. "I loved your sentence about saying how they appreciate the tiny things and they took nothing for granted," she told her, "and it was just the ability to touch each other and hold each other in those last few days." As Evans shared, Pat ended up passing away just 5 days before Ron.

While she said the memory was bittersweet, she called the hospital's decision to let her grandparents be together "the best thing they could have done for them." The Duchess of Cambridge recently released Hold Still: A Portrait of Our Nation in 2020, hiding several copies of the book around London. So far, she has also shared recordings of the phone calls about the photo submissions "Cancelled" and "Shielding Mila".