I didn’t photograph my mother very often during the long months I spent watching her disappear.  Despite a disconcerting lack of self-awareness, a side effect of the Alzheimer’s that eventually took her life, the camera made her self-conscious, and I couldn’t bring myself to subject her to that gaze.  Instead, I pointed the camera in the other direction, curious to see what was happening outside our tiny bubble of meals and medication management.  Gingerly at first, I began to tiptoe through the landmines crowding my emotional landscape simply by turning around; the earth was still spinning, even as I sat by her bed, perfectly still.  I documented my tiny discoveries meticulously, almost scientifically, greedily hoarding every nuance of life and death in what felt like a state of desperation; an attempt to freeze the world until I was free to actually see it.