Mary Morganelli often turns to art to express her emotions. Her recent painting, Forget Not, is a conceptualization of a mind-blowing disease — visual and spatial confusion, a struggle with memory and time, the remnants of one’s identity, a fragility of mind — that is both debilitating and permanent. The man represents her father who, along with a tidal wave of individuals diagnosed annually, has grappled with Alzheimer’s disease over the last five years. “My father was always the type to always be smiling; he loved life no matter how bad it was. Now he doesn’t know anyone anymore. It’s awful,” says Morganelli. The King City resident hopes to shed light on the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s on the individual and his or her family, as well as raise support for the Alzheimer Society of York Region, which helped to arrange care for her father at Maple Health Centre. Dubbed the “Silver Tsunami,” Alzheimer’s is an impending crisis that is a cause of concern for leading global experts. The Alzheimer Society predicts that 1.1 million Canadians will live with dementia by 2038 — that’s one person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or related dementia every two minutes. “My father’s condition has made us more aware of how devastating it is for other families that struggle with Alzheimer’s.”
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