Betty Annette Durham

Heart-wrenching one pager dedicated to a mother who battled with Lupus and Cancer.

After a decades-long battle with Lupus and Cancer, my mother succumbed in 1988 at the age of 44. She had been fighting the diseases her entire adult life, having already received a double mastectomy by the age of 29, the year I was born. I always knew she was sick—I was usually her caretaker and saw the worst of it firsthand—but my child’s perspective was still too narrow to truly understand. I was 14 years old when she died.

This page is a time capsule, left open for the world to see. Full of hazy Super 8 footage taken in the 60s and 70s that perfectly captures my mother’s playfulness, beauty, insecurities, and love for her family.