Mitsu Maeda • The Shining Lady

“Memories of my grandmother, Tsuyajyo, kindly stay with me all the time; A small purse in which Tsuyajyo collected 500 yen coins to give me and my sister when we visited her. Hide-and-seek in a morning after I stayed a night at their house… Tsuyajyo began showing symptoms of dementia around 2009. It was the first time my mother experienced having a family member with dementia. She took care of her mother, who could hardly perform basic tasks like eating or taking a bath. Tsuyajyo would often get angry irrationally and became someone my mother no longer recognized as her mother. These days lasted for about two years.”