creative forces

Blog # 93…May, 2019

As we all get older, knees and hips cry to be replaced, eyes and ears demand augmentation and our brains approach their best-by date too.  Dementia in its various forms starts to affect our friends and we wonder if that forgotten name or misplaced item might herald a similar fate for us.  There aren’t any surgeries or appliances to replace our thinking function and all the word games, jumping jacks and kale salads aren’t going to ward off the brain chemistry that can shift and makes us a different person. 

That’s the key phrase – still our father, sister or lifelong friend but somehow different, and everything changes.  Someone called dementia the disease of the beholder, we may suffer more than the person directly affected, and that’s where it becomes immensely challenging for us. We’re used to a relationship with a set of behaviours based on experience, roles and shared memories and now we need to find ways to maintain the relationship with a different set of rules. And, even harder, maybe just some of the time, because disorders of the mind shift around and sometimes memories appear unexpectedly and lost inhibitions return.

A couple of years ago, I saw a show at a small gallery in Durham (a small community an hour’s drive north and west of Toronto) by local artist Tony Luciani called Mama in the Meantime. Tony had taken a series of photographs of his mother Elia after she came to live with him when she was 91 and needed his support. It was a “photographic dialogue between mother and son” done with affection, humour and a shot of reality. Rather than chafing at the responsibility and regretting what was lost, Tony included Elia in his art practice, confronting aging and frailty and managing to hold on to some childhood dreams.

Tony's photos speak for themselves...

When a Child Has a Child

I'm Not Half the Person I Used to Be

                                                                       

Dining with Herself

   The message is -  don't abandon ship, find a way to stick around, it's important work.