In 1972 my stepfather Nathan Markovsky passed away; his brilliant mind obfuscated by a heavy fog of dementia. He couldn’t grasp that my mother had preceded him, that he was a widower. It was so helplessly depressing. On my visits he used to welcome me smilingly but couldn’t figure out who I was.
The mercilessness of his state, as well as some thoughts about my own aging (then, in some faraway future,) and its pitiless uncertainties, inspired this troubling image. The old man is stuck in a strange birdlike device with immovable wings. The whole contraption seems to stand still.
I am so very lucky; today, when close to my ninetieth birthday I look at this image and am stunned by my own life’s benevolence. . .
Samuel Bak, January 7, 2023 email UNO Omaha-Collection
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Old Man's Departure is an exorcism of the restless spirit of my stepfather, a survivor of Dachau who had lost his wife and two daughters in the Mauthausen camp. There was hardly a night when he did not jump up from the nightmares and awaken us with his screams. When I accompanied him on his last journey, I knew it was his first deep and peaceful sleep in over twenty-five years. Samuel Bak, The Art of Aging, 2003, p. 19
Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center, The University of Omaha, Nebraska
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