Memory

In 2007 I did a three-month residency with the Center on Age and Community photographing people with dementia. When I talk about it the reactions I get are usually laced with emotions of loss or fear. Most people know someone affected by Alzheimer's. And if they don't then the thought of…well, who wants to think about it? One woman in her thirties, a devout vegetarian, told me that she bribes a nephew with money so that he promises to visit her if she ends up in a nursing home. Her greatest fear is that she'll be forced to eat meat.
I have my own fears, of course, and the experience of the residency helped me to better understand the inevitable aging process, and to somewhat normalize a much stigmatized condition. Some of what I photographed was inspiring.
Vic and Gil have been married for sixty years. "You talk about love at first sight," he said. "It was a feeling I can't even express. It was overwhelming. Don't ask me, I have no idea how I had the guts to go and ask her for a dance. My whole body vibrated with electricity. We got married three months later to the day."
Ten years ago Vic was diagnosed and she no longer recognizes him. The thought of putting her in a nursing home was unthinkable. "I've worked for 52 years, so bathing her, dressing her, getting her to bed, feeding her before I eat, that's no problem. Every night I say a prayer that the good Lord lets me live even a day or two longer than my wife. So then I can know that she won't be in a nursing home. I can't see anybody else doing the things that I do for her, no matter how miserable it gets."
On Saturday nights they watch Lawrence Welk. "If one of our favorite songs comes on we'll dance, cheek to cheek. She can still do the polka."