Nanay means ‘mother’ in Tagalog, the native language of the Philippines and it is what I grew up calling my maternal grandmother so that she ‘never felt old’. Nanay raised five children of her own as a widowed parent. She later spent most of her time traveling between the Philippines, Canada and the United States visiting her children.
At the beginning of the global pandemic in 2020, Nanay returned to Atlanta, GA to receive two total knee replacement surgeries. This started off as a documentation of her recovery process but quickly became so much more than that. I started noticing Nanay’s relationship with my mother and the struggles my mom faces as her primary caretaker.
In a country where care for the elderly usually involves putting them in a home, my project shows the difficulties and challenges of aging and rehabilitation while also documenting the importance of what it means to take care of our elderly loved ones in our own home. I have witnessed my grandmother and mother’s relationship grow throughout a year of loneliness, fear, and being in a constant state of unknown.
