“My mother had dementia but beautiful things unfolded”: Best photo by Cheryl St. Onge | Art and design

I I am an only child. My father was killed in a car accident when I was 14 and my mother was 47. We became closely linked after that. She worked at a university and was an artist: she painted and sculpted birds. She was a wonderful person, she lit up a room and was someone everyone wanted to be around. She was very giving.

Later in life, she developed dementia. I left my teaching position to stay home and take care of her. She was very active, and would go out and tear out the lamps, and put the horses in the wrong stalls. It was very stressful when I would come home – I would pull into the driveway and think: “Oh my God!”

I had no previous experience with dementia, and I thought it wouldn’t last long, but of course it did. The first year was slow. She was saying that she had lost her mind, and that made her sad. I also became depressed and stopped taking pictures. To photograph my mother felt like a sacrilege. I thought it would be voyeuristic. Then her friend Johnny, who she also knew, set me on a challenge to take a picture of my mother. I turned to my mother on the couch and said, “We’re going to take a picture of Johnny.” Then she did something amazing: she turned to face the window and fluffed her hair. That shocked me. “Why don’t we—what else do we do?” she said. That changed everything.

She loved being outside and we would go out whenever possible to take pictures. This picture is of our dog – which my mother was not particularly fond of – a Jack Russell. The captain loved Khartoum. My mother came out and they were dancing together, lying in the afternoon sunshine, having a conversation of their own. Beautiful things like that kept coming. It has made sadness and depression less for me.

As dementia progressed, my mother would say she wanted to die, and ask me to take her there, as if it were a place we could travel to. We lived a surreal life together for a few years. I couldn’t think of losing her; It never occurred to her that she was losing me too. I remember her dancing to a Dolly Parton song, swaying her hips, and she was so beautiful that she stopped me in my tracks. I was crying watching her and remembering her as my mother. She came over and gave me a big hug and said, “What’s making you cry?”

If I felt sad, I felt there was an equal amount of love – and that was a useful form of self-preservation. I couldn’t take pictures of the stained sheets and dark cabinets. This, along with sunshine and happiness, is a very coordinated view—much of which has been deliberately omitted. The title of the book, Calling the Birds Home, comes from a day when I felt like I could do nothing else: I woke up in the middle of the night and she had moved the refrigerator to the middle of the room and put the chairs on the couch, and she was walking around naked. I felt so overwhelmed, I had to raise my hands up, acknowledge our place within the universe and ask for support.

Once she died, five years ago, I discovered how much I missed caring for and caring for someone. The roles of mother and daughter have been reversed. She was a great mother, she made our life together as beautiful as possible throughout my childhood and beyond.

When I started sharing photos, it turned into a global experience — yes, it’s terrible, but what it did with it was a new way to have a conversation when we were losing our ability to express our love. He helped us through a dark time. The pictures were secondary to that. She thrived all the time because of these images, she was willing to, it was part of her nature, and it didn’t change with dementia. I hope we look at difficult topics and also think about how to get through them. I hope this work helps motivate someone to move past grief and go and do something with someone they love.

Calling the Birds Home is published by L’Artiere

Biography of Cheryl St. Onge

child: Worcester, Massachusetts
High point: “The day I bought my first 8×10 view camera. I was in graduate school at the time and had spent a lot of money on it—even though it was worth every penny. I was young and excited and had a lot of energy. But once I started working with old Deardorff, the process forced me to slow down, and give myself time to think and imagine—my work changed and I never looked back.”
Top tip: “Get organized, keep a sketchbook, and find a group of fellow artists to share and discuss work. Be kind and patient with yourself—nothing happens as quickly as we hope it will.”