THE GATHERING DARK

Alzheimer’s dementia has the power to dismantle

the self. Throughout the later stages, my dad

could no longer recall the names of the people

he worked with or anything related to his thirty

plus years as a systems analyst at Wright

Patterson Air Force Base. He tirelessly tried to

deal with the realities of his diminishing control

of his memories by gathering work documents

and letters and anything he could find, and he

stored them in his briefcase. Henumbered

hundreds of pieces of paper related to his 

career and life trying to form a timeline.

He read and re-read each one trying to anchor

himself in a time and a place that once meant

so much to him. But the disease, like a fox, crept

in and robbed him of what he had built up over

a long and successful career. He was losing 

farther and faster the names of the people

he worked with and in the end, he couldn’t

even spell or write out his own name. In the

painting, the “ones and zeros” to the right

of his chair represent my dad’s name. It’s

the binary representation of the EBCDIC

coded version of his name, using the extended

binary code that he used as a computer systems

analyst.

60 x 48"

Mixed Media

2019