There is a relationship between time and memory, things happen at a point in time, but we remember things out of time. Creating this timeline allowed me to sort through images, documents, and memorabilia that I had not seen in years and piece them together as a sequence that spanned over a decade. I was able to reconstruct that time.
Many of the memories were sad, but there were also some really good ones. Memories of family visits, of my father's devotion to my mother, my young children's kindness and my husband's support, and memories of my mother's fight to keep her identity and life.
The timeline’s focus is on the disease’s later stages—when Alzheimer’s was on display physically. No one really speaks about AD’s physical impact, maybe because most patients don't live long enough to experience them all. Still, my mother did: the loss of speech, the inability to walk or sit upright, and the disfiguring brought on by that same immobility.