Absence

In this work I explore the fragile and complex relationship between memory, selfhood, and the human experience of loss. Drawing from a deeply personal encounter with terminal lucidity during my mother's final hours, I seek to address this unsettling event happening even in the state of cognitive decline. This phenomenon—a sudden and profound return of a person to their former self, often occurring just before death—poses a haunting paradox that challenges conventional understandings of identity and personhood.

Through this series I reflect on the tension between cultural fear and fascination with aging and mental deterioration. Dementia is often viewed as a definitive erasure of the self—yet terminal lucidity offers a brief but powerful glimpse into the possibility that the essence of a person may remain, even when the body and mind are failing. Here I explore these contradictions and question the reduction of people to their physical or cognitive limitations.

By confronting the discomfort and distance that society places between itself and the dying, I hope to invite a more compassionate and nuanced understanding of those in the final stages of life. I aim to provoke reflection on how we perceive and relate to others as they experience, and we witness, profound change. Even in the face of terminal illness, transcendent moments of connection, clarity and grace can emerge.