“My love of photography is melded with the ability to capture what I want to remember in the moment I want to never forget.”
Devin Dygert
We lost mom on January 31st after a 2 year battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. It is not entirely accurate to call it a battle, since there are no weapons in which to fight against this god awful disease. Every fiber of who you were just slowly disintegrates. Anyone who has had to watch a loved one succumb to this disease will know what a fucking cruel fate it is, both for the person suffering with it as well as those that love them. Death, relatively early on in mom’s progression, was by far the better outcome. I have to believe she is in a better place.
My mother gave me so many gifts, the love of beauty in all things, a passion to create with my hands, a strong sense of integrity and justice just to name a few. Reading back through old letters she wrote to me over the years after I left home, I am also reminded just how much she encouraged me to follow my own path. “Believe in yourself, we do!” she wrote when I was struggling during my first year at college. She always assured me that with enough hard work and determination anything was possible. She lived it in her own life and was respected and loved by so many. Although she didn’t always agree with my life choices and was honest about it, brutally honest at times, I knew mom admired that I had the strength to go my own way.
My mother and I had opposing views on just about everything from politics, religion, social issues, you name it, we didn’t agree on much. It made for some interesting conversations over the years. None of these differences matter now of course. Death has a way of softening the edges and the divisions between us. As survivors, we get to choose the narrative in which we remember our lost loved ones. I am older, perhaps a little wiser and now that I have my own children I know in my heart that mom, like all mothers, just wanted the best for me.
The photographs from this series were taken during the last 2 years of her life on my bi-yearly visits to see her in Montana. They are drives we took together in and around Billings and Red Lodge. I will cherish these images as I do the memory of my mother.