WITH ART BY HEATHER EVANS SMITH
N C L R ONLINE
105
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
North Carolina Miscellany
A LOSS OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTION, HE CALLED IT. KATE LIKED THE TERM. SOMEHOW IT ELEVATED THE DISEASE ABOVE THE MERE INABILITY TO REMEMBER THE DETAILS OF THE PAST, THE ORDINARY EVENTS THAT, TOGETHER, MAKE A LIFE. Curio (archival pigment print, 16x20) by Heather Evans Smith
decided not to speak about most of the memories that came to her, memories dredged up like sodden weeds from the bottom of a pond. Keep it cheerful, the neurologist said, so Kate tried to do just that. Her mother did nothing to take care of herself anymore. When she awoke, she no longer reached for the robe Kate laid on the bed. She sat, slouched on the edge, until Kate put it on her. “She no longer seems to know what to do next, how to do the smallest thing,” Kate told the doctor. A loss of executive function, he called it. Kate liked the term. Somehow it elevated the disease above the mere inability to remember the details of the past, the ordinary events that, together, make a life.
Now her mother rarely spoke. Kate could only guess at what she was thinking. Tell me what you see, what you hear, Kate would sometimes ask. Her mother would look at her blankly, and say nothing. When she did speak, the words came from nowhere, blurted out abruptly, sometimes making sense, often not. Her mother was talking in the bedroom. Kate strained to hear her. “Birds. There were birds, big birds. Green, and red. We saw them.” She’s remembering the parrots at the zoo, Kate thought. Her mother loved those parrots. Sassy things, she laughed. Maybe I’ll get one for the shop.
HEATHER EVANS SMITH lives and works in Chapel Hill, NC. She holds a BA from Peace College in Raleigh, NC. Her work has been featured in solo and joint exhibitions nationwide, magazines, literary journals, and online publications. She has been a guest lecturer at colleges and universities, including East Carolina University in 2015, and at photography conferences such as Australian Exposure in the
Gold Coast, Australia, and the Real Life photography conference in Alberta, Canada. Recently her work has been featured in American Photo (2016) and in Photo Vogue / Vogue Italia Interview (2015). The images included here are from her first monograph, Seen Not Heard, published by Flash Powder Projects in 2016. See more of her work on her website.