Paige Young

An ongoing project about actively grieving and confronting the realities of dementia — inspired by Witt Lowry’s “The War I’m Scared to Face.”

I was introduced to a grief I had not known in 2020 when I began to lose my cousin to brain cancer, slowly and painfully. Until this moment I always focused on documenting others’ stories while forgetting to create for my own. In 2021, I began documenting my grandparents as a way to process an internal war: accepting my own aging, and with that, the aging — and inevitable loss — of those around me. My grandfather was diagnosed with dementia, and my grandmother lives with stage 4 heart disease. Their decline made the passage of time feel painfully real. Having already lost many young family members, I found their memories preserved within my grandparents’ home. But when my grandparents moved into a memory care facility, even those familiar spaces — so rich with memory — were lost.

Their transition from a private home to a memory care facility marked not only a shift in their physical circumstances, but also a symbolic loss of space, history, and continuity. In response, I turned to photography as both an archival and affective tool — a method for capturing what was being lost, but also for uncovering the nuanced emotional textures within that loss. What emerged through this process was a deeper understanding of grief as nonlinear and multidimensional. My work interrogates the false binary between sorrow and joy by foregrounding the quiet, often unexpected moments of levity that coexist within experiences of mourning. These contradictions — laughter during a moment of sadness, or a sense of peace amidst decline — resist dominant cultural narratives that frame grief as purely somber or linear.

Even in spaces heavy with sadness, joy can emerge. We often feel guilty for laughing or smiling in these moments, but these emotional contradictions are deeply human. They remind us that love and loss exist hand in hand. This body of work honors those small, fleeting joys — the quiet resilience that keeps us moving forward. In documenting these moments, I reflect the full spectrum of grief: not just the pain, but the beauty, love, and humanity that live within it.

Images taken with 35mm film, 120mm film, and some DSLR/Mirrorless Nikon

In loss comes joy
This is as happy as it gets

Losing a life and grieving as they are alive
Makes you cherish the moments going by
Stopping and thinking this may be the last time
I hope they know how they are portrayed in my mind

You are the glue to my puzzle created life
Making all the family events feel glued together right
When pieces didn’t fit you created make shift objects to mold them tight
I’m scared to lose you but you made me take all these moments with stride

Losing young souls to time
Feeling uneasy about the passing of lives
Feeling joy for the moments I’ve had
Holding onto each breath like it’s my last

Getting older means facing hurt and grief
Getting older means laughing harder than the times in the past
Getting older means running the marathon even when you feel you can’t walk
But the moments of hope give momentum to to continue the drive

Hold on to the photos you wanted to burn
Because something in your mind told you that you shouldn’t be seen
Cherish the poor quality videos of your loved ones laughs
Store the words written on cards – trace them in ink – throw out your pencils
that give you the ability to erase
Good or bad these memories fade

Hold on to the photos you wanted to burn
Because something in your mind told you that you shouldn’t be seen
Cherish the grainy videos that recorded joy in times of grief
Save words written on cards – trace them in ink
Throw out the pencils that allow you to erase your mistakes