Photo Corners headlinesarchivemikepasini.com
A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Enhancing the enjoyment of taking pictures with news that matters, features that entertain and images that delight. Published frequently.
Friday Slide Show: Still Life
1 December 2023
Make photographs. That advice isn't on any of the caretaker sites we've visited as we try to find better ways to take care of Mom. But it's what we learned visiting Gina Martin's site The Bob and Diane Fund, named for her parents.
So as Mom slipped into dementia, we took a camera along on our daily trips.
It's not an easy assignment. There are things we want to photograph and many others we do not.
The compositions are rarely favorable. Often the background is littered with medical devices or something else that takes away from the subject.
But these moments do not come again.
Thinking about it today after we discussed qualifying Mom for hospice care with her nurse practitioner, we remembered the tradition of still life painting.
Her side table is more a still life of her days now. Not in the sense of momento mori but in the sense of still being alive.
So we took a few images of what's on top and sifted through them, wondering if they should be drained of their color.
We thought not.
We have resisted the temptation to think of this stage of her life as reduced. It is certainly harder to appreciate. Communication is significantly reduced as language skills evaporate.
But we have come to think of her journey in these days as going back the way she came.
Earlier it was the confusion of "home" with her childhood home, as if she were a girl again.
Lately it has been the loss of language. And now an inability to control her hands, much as a baby waves madly about.
Going back they way she came, we sit beside her holding her hand.
