A Painting of Loss and Grief

Abstract

This article names and explores the losses the author's mother (sufferer) and/or the author (caregiver) have experienced through Alzheimer's disease over the course of the past seven years. The author approaches the topic of loss through Alzheimer's by applying Simone de Beauvoir's principle that old age is as much a cultural reality as it is a biological one. She does so by drawing rich imagery from her mixed and complex cultural and religious background, as well as from literature, music, and the visual arts. She also refers to the diary written by her grandmother, a survivor of the 1915 genocide of the Armenian Turks by Ottoman Turkey, and draws parallels between her grandmother's losses, her mother's losses, and her own losses.