A Memory Against the Fog

I fell in love with photography late.

Not as a teenager with a film camera slung around my neck, not as a kid enchanted by light through a window. No, for me, it came later—after the bruises, after the chaos, after a thousand versions of myself had come and gone. I didn’t grow up with art. I grew up with survival. And somewhere along the line, the lens became the one honest thing I could still hold.

My grandmother raised me. A quiet force of love in a world that often wasn’t. She did her best, which means she did more than most. I was a lost soul then—drifting, breaking things, breaking myself, finding pieces of meaning in the wrong places. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. But I’ve also done things that felt like grace—like maybe, for a moment, I touched another person’s soul and reminded them they weren’t alone.

She was my anchor.

And then she began to forget.

At first it was names, appointments, the usual slips we all laugh off. But then the forgetting began to hollow out who she was. Her light faded. Her laughter lost its timing. She became untethered, living in a version of the world we couldn’t see. Dementia stole her slowly, gently, and cruelly. And no matter how many times I held her hand, I couldn't hold on to her.

I let her down more than once. I know that. It lives in me, quietly. But I also know she loved me, even when she couldn't say it anymore.

Dementia runs in families, they say. And sometimes that truth sits too close to the bone. I can feel it, like a thread pulled tight in the back of my mind. I fear one day I’ll start forgetting too—not just names, but moments. The good ones. The bad ones. Even the ordinary days with rain on the window and nothing much to say.

That’s why I take photos.

Not because every moment is beautiful. Not because I have some grand artistic vision to impress the world. But because I’m terrified of forgetting. Terrified of losing the map of my life. So I take pictures of everything—the light on the kitchen tiles, the face of someone I love, a cigarette half-smoked on a stone wall. I collect the world like evidence that I was here, that I felt things, that I saw what I saw.

Some days it’s easy. Some days the camera is a comfort.

But other days… it’s a burden. A task soaked in emotion. A reminder that memory is fleeting, and I’m fighting the tide with nothing but shutter clicks. It’s a love-hate thing. Some days I feel strong. Other days I can barely lift the camera. But I do. I must. Because every photo is a kind of remembering. A kind of prayer. A promise to myself: You were here. You lived this.

And maybe, one day, when the fog begins to creep in, these images will light a way back.

And if I’m honest, I’m scared of it ending—this connection, this clarity, this fragile thread I follow each time I press the shutter. I’m scared that one day even the photos won’t be enough. That the memories will slip through, one by one, like water through my hands. But until then, I’ll keep looking, keep clicking, keep holding on. Because maybe this—this act of seeing—is how I stay. How I last. How I remember.