Another Eternity

Although he has lived with Polio since he was a toddler, my father began showing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease nearly ten years ago. My mother had been fighting her Multiple Sclerosis for nearly ten years at that point. They once worked together in Physical Therapy caring for patients in their own homes, but now they are mostly immobile and care for each other with help from myself and my siblings.

Their long diseases and treatments have been familiar companions in my family and I believe they have helped make us seekers for an understanding of what lies beyond the body and the present. Be it religious, scientific and even metaphysical reasoning, there has been a wide and open search for ways to reason and hence contain the chaos that these diseases brought. I find myself weighing the mythologies we’ve explored over years against the realities of caring for sick loved ones, even as they continue their journey toward the inevitable. Certain aspects of their abilities and disabilities, the physical distance between us, their diseases, our home and the emblems my family's history have become touchstones for my photographs and for my understanding of all the changes as they continue to unravel.