Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (1): Collage of family photos of Madje Steber and daughter Maggie Steber at various times in their lives and before Madje was married. Center photo is Madje at 17 in high school in Electra, Texas.Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber: Collage of family photos of Madje Steber and daughter Maggie Steber at various times in their lives and before Madje was married. Center photo is Madje at 17 in high school in Electra, Texas.
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (12): Madje’s Hand. A scientist who also played the violin, Madje’s hands were always intriguing. I photographed her hands all the time. The hand of Madje Steber lays across a sheet while she sleeps. Madje was a scientist but also played the violin and had the long thin agile fingers that facilitated her abilities with the stringed instrument. (I loved my mother's hands and photographed them often - daughter Maggie Steber).
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (10): Breakfast in Bed. Madje rose everyday at 5am for decades. Now she can have breakfast in bed anytime she wants. The Romanian and Cuban caregivers spoil their residents with love, like family. Madje Steber enjoys breakfast in bed, a morning ritual that went toward spoiling her as part of her care at Midtown Manor Assisted Living Facility. As someone who worked up until the age of 72, daughter Maggie wanted her to be able to sleep late, eat breakfast whenever she wanted, and in general, be spoiled rotten, in the final years of her life as she suffered from the decline of dementia.
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (23): Madje with dark glasses: Madje Steber sits in the front lawn of Bay Oaks, an assisted living facility in the heart of Miami, Florida, after being moved there by her daughter when she could no longer live alone. Madje loved it and blossomed. There were little dogs and a few cats that lived there. She only stayed here for one year because she began to wander and had to move to Midtown Manor in Hollywood, Florida. COOL MADJE
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (29): A few weeks after moving into Bay. Profile of a proud woman. Oaks Home for the Aged (assisted living facility) in Miami, Florida, she blossomed, came out of the shell she had crawled into for the past ten years and was happy. Madje, one half Cherokee Indian, was 85 at time. Her happy days ended one year later when she began to wander and her daughter had to find a new place for her to live that would be more secure.
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (28): In a Bad Mood, Madje sits in her rocking chair in her room. Madje Steber, who suffers from memory loss, worries out loud about nothing in particular, mumbling after having breakfast in her private room at Midtown Manor assisted living facility in Hollywood, Florida.
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (20): Hands on military women group shot: IN SERVICE TO HER COUNTRY: During WWII, Madje Steber joined the US Army and trained with the signal corps at an army camp in Iowa. She was sent to Washington, D.C. after training and decoded secret messages at the Pentagon. Her beautiful wrinkled hands frame the signal corps group, with Madje smiling at the very center. 2004.
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (6): Bad Day for Madje, as she fights with everyone who comes near her. Suffering from dementia, Madje Steber had good days and bad ones. She went through stages of kicking, scratching, screaming, wandering, anger, fear, paranoia and gentle behavior, stages that all dementia victims suffer from and which pass.
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (29): Madje Steber naps in the courtyard at her daughter, Maggie's, home in Miami, Florida. Maggie had to move Madje from the assisted living facility where she had lived for a year because she began to wander. Maggie looked at 50 facilities in a 3-county area and finally found Midtown Manor in Hollywood, Florida, about 30 minutes from Maggie's home. Things got better as they grew worse.
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (16): Sleeping Beauty: Madje takes an afternoon nap in her long skirt. She sleeps in her bed with her stuffed kitty at Midtown Manor, her home, in Hollywood in 2008. Dementia and the medications she takes to fight memory loss causes Madje to sleep most of the day and night.
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (9): Going to Lunch. Madje at her new home Bay Oaks in Miami two weeks after arriving. She walks through the gardens of Bay Oaks home for the elderly in in Miami/Florida, on the way to lunch. She takes her stuffed kitty everywhere with her as she falls into the childlike stage of Dementia. Bay Oaks is the first place Madje went to live when she began to lose her memory. Though she fought the place at first, she grew to love it and even blossomed socially until she began to wander and had to move to a locked facility for her own safety.
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (15): After a rain, Madje goes outside and stops at a puddle to stare for a long time. The puddle only had a few palm trees reflected at the sides and the rest was empty. It made me think her memory must be like this. In many ways because of dementia, she is part of that reflection, not quite here in the real world, not quite there in her own reflections.
Madje Has Dementia by Maggie Steber (5): Madje Dies: Caregivers from her assisted living home gather around Madje Steber who died earlier that morning. Her daughter and a nurse washed her and dressed her, coming her long hair out and putting roses around her. This was her funeral before the cremation home came for her body.
