Documenting My Mother’s Last Days

Documentary Photographer Celine Marchbank is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From her book ‘Tulip‘. To see Celine’s projects click on any image.

Tulip, my mother’s favorite flower.

In September 2009 my mother, Sue Miles, was diagnosed with lung cancer and a brain tumor. While I was trying to come to terms with the fact she was dying, I decided I wanted, or maybe needed, to document the time she had left. I didn’t want to create a graphic portrayal of her death, it would have been impossible and wrong to focus only on the dying part, but rather I wanted to photograph our last months together. I looked at the things that made her uniquely her, the details in her house I thought I knew so well, the things that would also be gone when she was. Her love of flowers was a beautiful part of her personality; the house was always full of them, and as I photographed them I realized they were symbolic of what was happening – they represented happiness, love, kindness and generosity, but also isolation, decay, and finally death.