The Dissonance of Life

Plexiglass & Mylar

24x48x9in.

My grandmother passed in November 2019. She had dementia that was brought on from her depression about my father’s death. Because she was forgetting things, we thought it’d be best if she forgot my dad’s passing. So when she’d ask for him, we’d say he was stuck in traffic and would be here soon. Or he was on a business trip somewhere but would be here next week. He was there but really wasn’t because next week was always next week. She accepted that for as long as she could remember it because she was also there but really wasn’t. And this made us both grateful but sad. Towards the end, she forgot who I was but when I played her, her favorite hymns, she’d come back to me with every note she hummed. Music became the lubricant that softened the sharp edges of her shattered memories and melded them together so that she could sit with me sometimes and know that I was me and she was her. We’d listen and grin at each other as if we weren’t just barely holding on to the thin threads of her thoughts that would soon snap and pull us back across opposite ends of the dark chasm that was her memory. I’m thankful that she’s in a better place now but I miss her very much.

Dedicated to Burnell (Girlie) T. Williams