We drank from Life When my husband and I found each other, the world was full of possibility.
We had a direction. No mountain too high.Now he has Parkinson’s.
And somewhere, the world has begun to stutter.A new reality appears.
A world of institutions, caregivers, and organisations.
With a new identity:
you become a patient.
You become a caregiver.Words meant to organise care,
which slowly begin to describe people.“This disease you have together,” they say in the hospital.
“Pardon,” I said.
My husband has Parkinson’s.
I live with him.
That is something fundamentally different.“Our policy is to see it that way.”
Until I asked for him to be addressed directly.
And the conversation became a conversation again.My husband is still my husband.
He is not his diagnosis.
I am not my role.
We have not stopped being the same people.That is what my work is about.
The outside tells a story,
but it does not determine what the object is.
The true space lies within—
the unnameable, the inner.My objects can be opened.
They hold something personal,
something that belongs to their owner.We Drank from Life
is about the life that has been lived:
memories, experiences, time,
your essence.
