‘She wasn’t very fond of Skipper, our jack russell, who loved the hose. But they were dancing together – two beings in the afternoon sunlight, having their own conversation’
I
am an only child. My father was killed in a car accident when I was 14 and my mother was 47. We were really tightly bonded after that. She worked at a university and was an artist: she painted and carved birds. She was a wonderful person, who lit up a room and was someone everyone wanted to be around. She was very giving.
Later in life, she developed dementia. I left my teaching position to stay home and look after her. She was very active – she would go outside and rip up bulbs, put the horses in the wrong stalls. It was very stressful to come home – I would enter the driveway and think: “Oh my word!”
I didn’t have any previous experience of dementia, and I was thinking it wouldn’t be for long – but of course it was. The first year was slow. She would say she was losing her mind, and it made her sad. I got depressed too and stopped making pictures. To photograph my mother felt like sacrilege. I thought it would be voyeuristic. Then a friend, Joni, who also knew her, set me a challenge to take my mother’s picture. I turned to my mother on the couch and said: “We’re going to make a picture for Joni.” Then she did a remarkable thing: she turned to face the window and fluffed up her hair. That shocked me. She said: “Why not – what else are we doing?” That changed everything.
