Som Chai meets my family & friends
I am so excited that Som Chai is now in Oz and has been granted a partner visa.
He's met my family and friends, and even come along to Uni with me.
It is wonderful having him here with me - no more lonely nights or awkward outings on my own!
I can throw my wish list in the fire now because he fulfils all my dreams. I am so proud of him - he is charismatic, generous and kind, and he is also Budhist and a meditator!
I wondered whether there was a difference between art made by a human and art made by a machine? So I made a fan that painted, and I became a painting human fan.
Conclusion: there was no difference.
Just an Ordinary Peasant is based on my uncle’s experience as an inmate at Treblinka extermination camp in 1944. His memoir recounts that while being forced to carry corpses from the gas chambers to an open-air pyre, he was handed a sack which held little children who were still alive. The guard commanded the sack be thrown into the fire. The woman I play in Just an Ordinary Peasant is a hybrid character created from the memoirs of my uncle, my parents and my own research. She sings and dances and also throws a sack of babies into the fire. This piece explores my own biases as well as questions the culpability of ‘ordinary people’ who were accomplices to the atrocities carried out during the Third Reich.
According to mum’s passport she is 99 going on 100, but according to the Lodz Ghetto records she is 100 going on 101. Till not long ago, mum had lived a rich and vibrant life despite living through that terrible war and its aftermath.
In 2017, after dad died, she made the decision to move in with me. Instead of feeling burdened, I embraced the change and the opportunity to care for her.
These posts capture mum’s life since she moved in. These were precious years when she lived with me in my home - a ‘share home’ - together with other family members and housemates. Everyone supported, appreciated and loved having her around.
Many of us are not connected to the lives of the very old. I wanted to documents these years with mum as a record for the generations to come and anyone else who might be interested. These posts reveal the daily joys and challenges of caring for a loved one with dementia.
Mum began having more and more falls and in 2022, after 5 years of living at home, we moved her into the Aged Care home across the road. I was very sad that I could no longer care for her at home.
Even though her world today is very small, I can see that she is content in her little room as long as we, the family, visit her regularly and show her our love.
I have continued to document the ups and downs of mum’s world while she’s at the home.
These posts also include many heart-felt and awe inspiring stories from mum’s earlier years - pre, during and post war - to remind us all that she hasn’t always been old, and her spirit lives on.
