THE GATHERING DARK
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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