Leaving And Waving by Deanna Dikeman.
Mothering Our Mothers
Gem Fletcher reckons with the fact that one day, in the not-so-distant future, hers and her mother’s roles will inevitably switch.
Photography by Deanna Dikeman
For 27 years, Deanna Dikeman photographed her parents, Pat and Jerry waving goodbye as she left their home in Sioux City, Iowa. The simple gesture was never intended to be a project, just a way to deal with the sadness of leaving them. Over the years, it became their farewell ritual. Deanna would snap them from the front seat of her car—her parents waving from the garage, the driveway, Jerry pushing his head through the car window or Pat wedging herself inside the car door. Through repetition—there are 90 goodbyes in total in Deanna's book Leaving and Waving —we witness life unfold. Seasons change, children are born, style evolves and every one ages. Together, they describe the way love is engendered through the work of caring.
In 2009, Jerry was no longer there. He passed away a few days before his 91st birthday. When I turn the page and see Pat standing alone in the driveway, waving for the first time, my breath tightens. It's a sucker punch to the chest. A haunting sense of grief occupies the silence between the photographs - an excruciating reminder that life is constantly in flux. "After my dad died, I was getting ready to leave, and I got the camera out, and that day my mother said - No more pictures, "Deanna tells me. "But she was generous, and we continued. It was our silliness—a sweet little ritual. We'd do hugs and kisses, and my mom would cry. And then I would get the camera out. It was probably good for all of us because I was really close to my parents, but I lived 400 miles away. It was always so hard to leave."
We continue to see Pat for just under a decade, first at home and then after she moves into assisted living. The very last image in the book is an empty driveway. Everything is quiet. There is no one left to perform the ritual of separation. Leaving and Waving is a different type of love story—one that describes the dynamics of presence and absence. "As my Dad got older and frailer, I'd help them out more, doing work around the house," Deanna explains. "After he died, I called my mother every day to keep her company and help her through all sorts of things emotionally." Through photographs of waving, Deanna chronicles love in action and the tipping point when we, as daughters, role switch to mother our mothers.
“Now, as I watch my mother care for her mother in her remaining years, it gets a little harder to ignore that I’m next.”
I first witnessed this transition in high school, watching my best mate Jess balance her schoolwork while diligently caring for her mum Diane as she fought a slow and brutal battle against breast cancer. Diane was a legend amongst our friends. We hung out in her kitchen nearly every day after school, drinking cups of tea and chatting shit about our day. Diane was cool and kind. She was never judgmental and always generous when offering an alternative opinion on the daily drama. As her treatment progressed, Jess did everything for her mum, always intuitively knowing what she needed or how to make her more comfortable. Jess was the oldest of three siblings, and their relationship was the kind you envied, where they were simultaneously mother and daughter and best friends.
As Diane's disease progressed, utter joy and devastation coexisted. Jess was there by her side every day until her last. The situation was impossible, brutal and tragic. I was in awe of Jess's patience, resilience and deep, unwavering love in the face of the unimaginable approaching. The invisible work of caretaking was both life-altering and affirming, an unavoidable rite of passage that centres what is sacred between us through profound physical and emotional labour.
Now, as I watch my mother care for her mother in her remaining years, it gets a little harder to ignore that I'm next. A disorientating, overwhelming unknown lingers in my psyche. Over the last decade, I have already felt the tide changing. It's subtle. Sometimes there are signs that we are dancing around something—a sensate experience akin to growing pains as we attempt to become aware of our responsibility in sustaining each other at all odds. Unable to deny the cyclical, heart-wrenching reality that we will retrace mothering one day, but cast in entirely different roles.
I'm no stranger to the profound work of caretaking. In 2018, my family went through the motions of trying to make the final years of my grandad Ted's life comfortable. His world was slowly reconfigured by dementia for years until he finally needed full-time care. My parents put their life on hold. Careers were sacrificed, finances sapped. Time with him became bittersweet as he traversed the space between lucidity and unknowing. We only survived the shared feeling of sadness and stuckness if everyone pitched in. My sister and I took turns visiting him on Saturdays. The journey was fraught, never knowing what state of mind you may find him in and preparing yourself for the worst. On some mornings, my resistance manifested as a full-body experience—unsure if I was mentally ready for a reckoning with the cruel reality of the end of life.
Unexpectedly, it was often the absurdity of the situation which caught me off guard. I'd go from desperately trying to glue his false teeth in because he'd forgotten how to do it—to surreal conversations when he thought I was his ex-wife Brenda (who I bare an uncanny resemblance to) as he pondered, "why the fuck I was in his room?" No matter what happened, we endeavoured. Small, often thankless acts of care wove together in the ever-expanding net of love we shared for him. I discovered that love has a quality of obliterating certain kinds of boundaries, and the more I took care of him, the more I witnessed the end of one version of myself and the birth of another.
It's hard not to marvel at the work love does and what it can summon us to do. While what may lay ahead is complex and seemingly insurmountable, these acts of care evoke the essence of what it means to be human. Beyond the challenges and sacrifice, new forms of intergenerational connection open up, offering a way to remake our relationship with each other and the world. An experience we can only acquire the language for by doing impossible things.
