Irene Delka McCray - "Mother, Through the Window," "Mother's Insights," "Her Hands," and "In Her Long Ago"

These drawings are part of a series that reflect on my mother in her final months with Alzheimer’s. Her image primarily honors my connection to her imaginal journeying that lengthens my life backwards in favor of her long ago, and respects the reversal of trust, from me in her to her in me. With the work I am also meaning to encourage visibility of our elders and oppose a general modern of dismissal of the old.

Even with a lifetime of experience with the strength of my mother’s character, it’s her end years that impress me the most. On my path out of this cavernous sorrow, her image insists on acknowledgement of the beautiful and complex profundities of wizened old flesh that seem take on a likeness to leaf veins, so I make those pairings, which returns her in my mind to the expansive mystery of nature. 

The drawings are being done partly from imagination and memory and from photos taken through windows during Covid lockdown. It was one of many injustices brought to light, that slow and indifferent response to our old ones being so very vulnerable in care homes during covid. It suggest our elders are thought to be insignificant in a world consumed with productivity and usefulness. Yet longevity is its own state of being, holding meaning and discovery in its layers of lasting and connections to lost threads of a cultural past. As the old pull themselves in, they expand us out and present for us what and who we arrive out of.