“After the stroke, everything changed.”

By Edge of Humanity Magazine, November 5, 2020

Portrait and Documentary Photographer Ali Smith is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘ After the Stroke’. To see Ali’s body of work, click on any image.

Dad’s hospital room during heart failure after the stroke

Dad eats a sandwich at home

Dad feeds pigeons near his home in New York City

My dad had been so rebellious, so unmanageable, so difficult for so long before. Now he was weakened, vulnerable, changed, not entirely for the worse.

It’s hard to watch anyone you love suffer. It’s a particular unpleasant marker in life when your parents get ill and you step forward onto the front lines of your own mortality, no longer standing behind them in line. You begin to realize you won’t always be “someone else’s kid.” That you will soon have to think of yourself as only “yourself.”

Dad’s rubber bands

Grandma Dorothy’s ashes, found cleaning dad’s apartment after the stroke

Will you express a million thoughts to them now, before it’s too late? Thoughts about gratitude, love, anger, fear, sadness.

You want to keep shared memories alive more than ever now because you know they’ll soon fade into secrets that only you will have access to; The naughty adventure of that night you walked on the side of the road together at midnight when you were ten; The birthday when he built you a see saw out of drainage pipes for your friends to use inside your NYC apartment; The mythical stories he used to read to you at bed time.

Everything is upended when your parent gets ill. After the stroke, everything changed.