Scavenging Through Scrapbooks
My grandma’s health has deteriorated rapidly over the last couple years. A diabetic episode led to an acceleration in her dementia—these days, her mind and memories are fragmented.
My relationship with her is strange. Prior to the diabetic episode, I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in 10+ years. She had estranged herself from family and friends and despite my longing for a closer bond with this magical woman I recalled from my infancy, that simply wasn’t something that was going to happen.
I’ve been fortunate to spend time with her recently, although the time is spent in the nursing facility she’s living in and all of us are masked up and her mind is neither here nor there, it is dystopic but it’s more than I had before and I’m grateful for that.
My folks and I have been making trips to her home in central Texas to take care of her and her things. Along the way, we unearthed dozens of photo albums and scrapbooks that she’d put together over the years, overflowing with notes and pictures and scraps of a life that I am only now piecing together.
They’re wildly inspiring. I have plans to explore them in some new work centered around themes of memories and forgetting and life itself.
More to come . . .