Härmä / Hoar
by Utu-Tuuli Jussila
My grandmother lived to be 94 years old (1925–2019). She wished to live also the last years of her life alone in her home in the countryside in Ylihärmä, Finland. The house is located kilometres away from the nearest town.
She had early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, which is why she occasionally imagined that strangers visited the yard or the basement. A motion-sensing surveillance camera was installed to ensure that the intruders would be detected. Eventually, the camera ended up monitoring my grandmother instead.
I first saw the surveillance camera images after my grandmother had already passed away. In them, my grandmother does repetitive yard work in the twilight of her life until she no longer appears in the pictures. The yard, however, is not emptied, but life after human presence continues.
