In July of 2022, my Mother dies after 5 years of Alzheimer's decline. In the wake of her illness and death she left countless belongings, photographs, and keepsakes whose meanings were lost to us. Memory is inextricably linked to so much of what we possess and without those memories, those... things... well, they are clutter and junk. Their value has been reduced to their intrinsic worth. I started looking at my own life through the lens of Alzheimer's: the stories I love to tell, the memories I share, and the objects that I have gathered over my 54 years and decided that the only way to keep them was to share them or get rid of them.
Mom was restlessly creative. I can recount he life through the phases of her crafting - needlework, appliqué, decoupage, crochet, stenciling, quilting, stamping, scrapbooking, and finally card making. Throughout, mom always used language as an expressive tool. She was always adapting tunes to our life by changing lyrics and she gave us a family vocabulary some of which I share here.
We all do things as young people we are not proud of... and sometimes, if we are invested in self examination, the lesson they teach make us better people.
A 20 year tale of an awkward me saying something I probably should not have said but having the chance to revisit it later. If you know me, you know this story.
Keith Flippen - Keith@BeAnActor.com
Represented by Artists' Resource Agency - Rusty Wiggs