Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
When my 91-year-old mother, Elia, moved in with me,
I thought I was doing her a service.
In fact, it was the other way around.
You see, Mom was having issues with memory loss and accepting her age.
She looked defeated.
I tried to make her as comfortable as possible,
but when I was at my easel painting,
I would peek over and see her just there.
She'd be staring at nothing in particular.
I'd watch her slowly climb the stairs, and she wasn't the mom I grew up with.
I saw instead a frail, tiny, old woman.
A few weeks went by, and I needed a break from my painting.
I wanted to play with a new camera I had just bought.
I was excited;
it had all sorts of dials, buttons and settings I wanted to learn.
So I set up my tripod facing this large mirror,
blocking the doorway to the only bathroom in the house.
After a while, I hear,
"I need to do use of the washroom."
"Five minutes, Mom. I need to do this."
Fifteen minutes later, and I hear again,
"I need to do use of the washroom."
"Five more minutes."
Then this happened.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
And this.
(Laughter)
And then this.
(Laughter)
I had my aha moment; we connected.
We had something tangible we could do together.
My mom was born
in a small mountain village in central Italy,
where her parents had land and sheep.
At a young age, her father died of pneumonia,
leaving his wife and two daughters alone with all the heavy chores.
They found that they couldn't cope, so a very hard decision was made:
Mom, the oldest at 13,
was married off
to a complete stranger twice her age.
She went from being just a kid and was pushed into adulthood.
Mom had her first child when she was only 16.
Years later, and now living in Toronto,
Mom got work in a clothing factory
and soon became manager of the very large sewing department.
And because it was full of immigrant workers,
Mom taught herself words from translation books.
She'd then practice them -
in French, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese,
Danish, Polish, Russian, Romanian, Hungarian -
all around the house.
I was in awe of her focus
and determination to succeed at whatever she loved to do.
I do remember and I have to mention
that her attempt at Chinese with her Italian accent
was very, very funny.
(Laughter)
After that bathroom aha moment,
I practiced my newfound camera skills with Mom as portrait model.
Through all of this, she talked and I listened.
She'd tell me about her early childhood and how she was feeling now.
We had each other's attention.
Mom was losing her short-term memory,
but was better recalling her younger years.
I'd ask, and she would tell me stories.
I listened, and I was her audience.
I got ideas.
I wrote them down, and I sketched them out.
I showed her what to do by acting out the scenarios myself.
We would then stage them.
So she posed,
and I learned more about photography.
Mom loved the process, the acting.
She felt worthy again; she felt wanted and needed.
And she certainly wasn't camera shy.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Mom laughed hysterically at this one.
(Laughter)
The idea for this image
came from an old German film I had seen, about a submarine,
called "Das Boot."
As you can see, what I got instead looked more like "E.T."
(Laughter)
So I put this image aside, thinking it was a total failure
because it didn't reach my particular vision,
but Mom laughed so hard,
I eventually, for fun, decided to post it online anyway.
It got an incredible amount of attention.
Even someone from Australia reached out to me,
wanting permission to use this image as their company logo.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
So I asked what their business was.
They wrote back,
saying that they, quote,
"sold weird and unusually odd sex toys."
(Laughter)
I thought about it for a weird and unusually odd split second
and decided no.
(Laughter)
Now, with any Alzheimer's, dementia,
there's a certain amount of frustration and sadness
for everyone involved.
This is Mom's silent scream.
Her words to me one day
were "Why is my head so full of things to say,
but before they reach my mouth, I forget what they are?"
"Why is my head so full of things to say,
but before they reach my mouth, I forget what they are?"
(Applause)
Now, as full-time care partner and full-time painter,
I had my frustrations too.
(Laughter)
But to balance off all the difficulties, we played.
That was Mom's happy place,
and I needed her to be there too.
(Laughter)
Now, Mom was also preoccupied with aging;
she would say,
"How did I get so old so fast?"
So old.
So fast.
I, on the other hand, was busy doing my daily domestic chores.
It was really, really hard work.
(Laughter)
I call this one "Agitated."
(Laughter)
Now, I also got Mom to model for my oil paintings.
This painting is called "The Dressmaker."
I remember, as a kid,
Mom sewing clothes for the whole family
on this massive, heavy sewing machine
that was bolted to the floor in the basement.
Many nights, I would go downstairs and bring my schoolwork with me.
I would sit behind her in this overstuffed chair.
The low hum of the huge motor and the repetitive stitching sounds
were comforting to me.
When Mom moved into my house,
I saved this machine and stored it in my studio for safekeeping.
This painting brought me back to my childhood.
The interesting part
was that it was now Mom sitting behind me,
watching me paint her
working on that very same machine she sewed at
when I sat behind her,
watching her sew 50 years earlier.
I also gave Mom a project to do to keep her busy and thinking.
I provided her with a small camera
and asked her to take at least 10 pictures a day
of anything she wanted.
These are Mom's photographs;
she's never held a camera in her life, before this.
She was 93.
We would sit down together and talk about our work.
I would try to explain how and why I did them,
the meaning, the feeling,
why they were relevant.
Mom, on the other hand, would just bluntly say,
"Si." "No." "Bella." "Brutta."
(Laughter)
I watched her facial expressions.
She always had the last say, with words or without.
This voyage of discovery hasn't ended with Mom.
She is now in assisted-living residence,
a 10-minute walk away from my home.
I visit her every other day.
Her dementia had gotten to the point
where it was unsafe for her to be in my house:
it has a lot of stairs.
She doesn't know my name anymore,
but, you know what, that's okay.
She still recognizes my face
and always has a big smile when she sees me.
(Applause)
I don't take pictures of her anymore.
That wouldn't be fair or ethical on my part.
She wouldn't understand the reasons for doing them.
We recently had a major mother-and-son exhibition
at a Toronto public art gallery.
There were 150 works on display.
How awesome is that?
(Applause)
We also donated 100 of the photographs in this exhibition
to our local Alzheimer's Society.
(Applause)
My father, my brother, my nephew ...
my partner, and my best friend,
all passed away suddenly,
and I didn't have the chance to tell them how much I appreciated and loved them.
With Mom, I need to be there
and make it a very long goodbye.
(Applause)
For me, it's about being present and really listening.
Dependents want to feel a part of something, anything.
It doesn't need to be something exceptionally profound that's shared.
It could be as simple as walks together.
Give them a voice
of interaction, participation
and the feeling of belonging.
Make the time meaningful.
Life - it's about wanting to live and not waiting to die.
(Applause)
Can I get a wave and a smile for everyone, please?
This is for you, Mom.
(Applause)