all mimsy were the borogroves

In 2011, at the age of seventy , my mother, Mary Elizabeth Dakan, was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment and, shortly thereafter, Lewy body dementia. She lived with this disease and its wicked unpredictable progression until she died just a few weeks before her seventy-seventh birthday. Lewy body dementia is unfamiliar to most people. It is a disease that is hard to explain, hard to comprehend and hard to witness. Throughout these years, my mother, who had always been a source of comfort to others, became hard to be with. Her disease made people uncomfortable. During this time, it felt as if all who loved her failed her in some way. It was painful to observe her once busy and full  home grow empty. She was not at all herself and still so much herself. I relied on photography, a shared passion between my mother and me, to see her, to help me be with her, and to document this short and yet relentless period of her life.