Dementia is a daily reality for approximately 750,000 Canadians, including my mother.  This series was created to generate awareness of dementia and creatively process the succession of personal losses.  

Each piece is a family photograph overlaid with a decaying leaf drawn on a piece of Usumino paper.  The Japanese Usumino paper is very fine but also very strong due to its long fibers of the kozo plant.  The strength provides a translucent surface for the drawings, while crumpled it resembles facial tissues.  The created image is an appropriate visual for the grief that accompanies the progression of dementia.  Dementia is described as a long journey of grieving.  There is a steady falling away of abilities: memory problems, struggling to learn, disorientation in time and space, cognition difficulties, behavioral and mood changes, and loss of mobility.  

Dementia typically affects an individual’s ability to use language.  This can be observed in an inability to name familiar objects, the reverting to a first language, and the possible complete loss of language.  The title of this series is a play on words to depict the progression of aphasia.  Love refers to the loved family and friends in the photographs.  Lief,* meaning dear, darling, or sweetheart in Dutch, my mother’s first language, renames the same individuals, but with the Dutch term of endearment instead of a particularized name.   Leaf symbolizes the final inability to recognize and meaningfully name loved ones.  

It is that loss of recognition that is one of the most heartbreaking aspects of dementia.  My mom still knows who I am, but she has called me by her sister’s name and introduced me as her granddaughter. It is quite likely that she will eventually not recognize any of her loved ones.  Since the photographs are of family and friends, I am asking myself (and the viewer) to consider what it might feel like to be the one forgetting.  

As I make and view these images about remembering and forgetting, I also remember that my mother’s current season of dementia is only a small part of her story.  My mother has lived a blessed life, full of growth, love, and goodness.  Even now, she is a cheerful, positive, friendly, resourceful person.  I hope that the viewer can hold this larger story in mind while considering the nature of dementia, and the brevity and delicateness of life.

*Lief is pronounced like the English word “leaf”.