The decline continues. Kidneys still work, dehydration is under way. Our niece was diagnosed with cancer only 7 months ago. Now, the hospice nurse says one or two days are all she has left. Although she’s not comatose, she is less and less responsive. Our job is to regularly administer pain and anti anxiety meds […]
It could be any time now. Our niece continues to decline from her cancer. Breathing is harder. The only medication she takes now are for pain anxiety. Family members came by all day. My niece’s room was always filled with their respectful, loving presence, in various combinations.
Long day. Lots of people over to visit us and our niece. She is sick with cancer and the docs say she does not have long. Don’t know how they know that, but it’s looking like they bay be right. Below is a watercolor which was inspired by today’s events.
My niece is, for intents and purposes, mute. She lies there with her eyes closed most of the time. I say her name loudly, perhaps too loudly, and she opens her eyes. They usually don’t stay open for long. From gaze, I can’t tell if she recognizes me. She is focused on the mid-distance. Her eyes are […]
Over a period of about 10 years or so, I must have taken 300 rolls of film of my brother Mike. I combined these photos with old family snapshots, my journal entries and information garnered from my parents, to create a photographic memoir. It is a safe bet to say Mike didn’t know that I […]
I’ve been looking though the photographs I took of Mike when he was at his group home. I used to visit fairly often with my parents in the 1990s. We would often take walks through the nearby park. I always had my camera with me. Mike is my older brother. For many years I took […]
In keeping with the process I’ve been using in my last series that began with a photo of my brother Mike*, beginning with Portrait, Mike and Mom, ending with Autism and Cave Paintings. In yesterday’s post (Emotional), I revisited a seminal photo in my long term photo project about him. Today I tried to boil […]
I began photographing Mike, my older brother, on his 40th birthday. I wanted to try figuring him out. Since I was a child, Mike was unreachable. In 1952, he was diagnosed with autism and ‘profound retardation’, according to the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM I). Mike is nonverbal to this day. On […]
I intended to focus on painting a representation of Mike’s* eye from a childhood photograph of one our camping trips. However, his eye doesn’t tell the whole story. I thought maybe the combination of his eye and mouth would be adequate. Here is a preliminary sketch, and here is the watercolor study. Mike’s face is distorted in […]
I’m still investigating the photograph my Dad took of Mike and my Mom. I estimate the date of the photo as circa 1958. Mike is my older brother who is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. We used to go camping. Mike was a handful, I don’t know how my parents took us all (Mike, Dave, my […]
