Waving goodbye

 

Leaving and Waving, a new photo show at the Polygon Gallery, brought back memories of farewells with my own parents.

For 27 years, U.S. photographer Deanna Dikeman took photos of her parents at the end of her visits to them, starting in 1991.

There was always a moment at the end of my parents’ visits when I didn’t quite want to say goodbye –they were old after all, and what if this was the last time? Stretching things out a bit, I’d walk them to their car and stand there waving them off.

Those moments came back to me Thursday night at a Polygon Gallery show recording 27 years of just such waves. Over all those years, Deanna Dikeman snapped photos of her parents waving goodbye after her periodic visits to their home in Sioux City, Iowa.

In 1991, her parents look cheerful and strong. In 2009, there are a curious number of goodbye waves: Many visits? Some problem?  And then there is only one parent – her mother – waving farewell from the open garage. As the years go on, her mother’s face gets sadder – it’s worse and worse to let her daughter go.

In 2017, the photos are taken in a care home, her mother surrounded by the flowery brightness intended to leaven the sadness of such places. The final photo of the series is of the family home, garage closed. There’s nobody left to wave goodbye.

After my father died in March of 1995, my mother drove herself out to our place for lunch in dad's familiar car. It was when she was leaving, one person walking alone to that car when there had always been two, that I truly felt the departure I’d always dreaded. But there was my mother, bravely carrying on alone.

 I waved.

This is the last photo of Dikeman's parents waving her goodbye together. Her father died in 2009, aged 91.

Now her mom says goodbye alone.

She looks sadder as the years go along.

Finally, she says goodbye from the door of her care home, where she moved in 2017. She died the same year.

There's no one to wave farewell at the family home anymore.

The sequential photos of 27 years of visits were set out on a shelf at the Polygon Gallery. You could walk from 1991 to 2017 and see the seasons and people change.