Coping

This week, my niece sent me these links, and these words, everyone has a different way of coping:

Mark Seymour, of the UK, documented his father’s decline through Alzheimer’s with his camera.  Beautiful, poignant images. 

And photographer Maggie Steber’s,  captured her mom’s journey through Alzheimer’s, in  Madje Has Dementia.  Again, beautiful, and poignant.

These folks photographed their way through.

My aunt painted her way through.  When my grandmother died, my aunt picked up an easel and canvases and brushes and oil paints.  She was a prolific painter for three years.  It is only recently that I realized her painting season was her grieving season.  She had not painted before, and  has not painted since.

And my niece, who is my dreaming-and-scheming assistant, knows that is what I am doing at my mom’s house right now.   Sometimes coping and creating are one and the same. 

If you stepped into my mom’s house right now, things might appear a bit manic.  Paint cans and brushes and rollers, furniture in various stages of makeover, pine flooring piled and waiting to be put down, cabinets and appliances waiting for the flooring to be put down, and on and on.  But there is something about walking into that, deciding on the next little piece of work, and focusing on the task at hand  that calms me, contents me.   And when I catch a glimpse of what this space might mean to others and me and my family, I am so, so thankful for what coping can create. 

june