In the house of filmmaker Martin Duckworth, on rue Jeanne-Mance in Montreal, his late wife Audrey is omnipresent. On a rope suspended across the living room are hung all the condolence cards sent by their friends on his death, and on the wall, drawings that children have made him.
“The furniture comes from his family, the utensils too,” says the filmmaker. Martin Duckworth and his wife Audrey are at the heart of the documentary Dear Audreyby Jeremiah Hayes, which hits theaters on August 19 in Quebec.
In this film, Jeremiah Hayes is interested in the years during which Audrey Schirmer was afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, while Martin Duckworth provides her with the role of caregiver. We also meet one of the couple’s daughters, Jacqueline, suffering from autism syndrome, who loses her caregiver in the same breath.
“I made no decision about the film,” says Martin Duckworth. But I made Jeremiah aware of everything that was going on in my life. »
Accept death, come back to life
Both very sad and very touching, Dear Audrey confronts head-on realities that most of us dare not face, through the inevitable decline of a strong and devoted woman, a beloved figure.
As his wife first loses her sense of direction and memory, then speech, Martin Duckworth revisits her own story as if to find meaning.
A filmmaker committed to peace, who has shot films around the globe, Martin Duckworth met Audrey Schirmer, also a photographer, during the Vietnam War. “I was impressed by his political positions,” he recalls in the film. But beyond his professional career, he discusses here the failure of his previous marriages, and the importance of his seven children, three of whom are Audrey’s children.
He looks back on his birth, on the militancy of his feminist mother, but also on a serious accident which almost cost him his life and which made him live a kind of imminent death experience. “It was because of that accident that I lost my fear of death, that I accepted it as an important aspect of life,” he says. This experience then, he says, allowed him to better adapt to the death of his parents and his wife Audrey. “Coming back to life is such a beautiful experience,” he sums up.
“I always make films on difficult subjects, which look at major problems, and which seek solutions. The goal of making a film is to participate with the subject, to share the difficulties, to take a journey while looking for an exit. I have made many films in my career, and in all cases, these are films where the characters are engaged in the search for solutions”, said Martin Duckworth in an interview with The duty.
Love him a little more each day
But what solution to the disease that advances slowly but surely, taking with it the soul of the loved one?
Over the days, months and years, Martin Duckworth discovers that he loves his wife ever more.
“The disease made me realize how important it was to me,” he says. Also, the film does not fail to highlight the work of committed photographer Audrey Schirmer, who however had to abandon it and change careers to take more care of her disabled daughter. About Jacqueline, who hesitates at first to go see her mother in her ultimate residence, Martin Duckworth says “she took a long time to understand that it was not only her who needed Audrey, but that ‘Audrey needed her’.
For me, it was very difficult to lose my love, over a period of five or six years, to lose my love, my companion
Of Audrey and Alzheimer’s disease, he said in an interview: “She suffered when she learned that she could no longer have a driver’s license, that she could no longer drive. It was the hardest part for her, it made her realize that she was seriously ill. It was the only negative aspect of her experience. She continued to accept life as she always had. »
The suffering of the loss, in this case in particular, it is more the loved ones who experience it. “For me, it was very difficult to lose my love, over a period of five or six years, to lose my love, my partner. Until the end of his wife’s life, Martin Duckworth spent as much time as possible in her company, in the residence where she had to move after having suffered a serious fall. Over time, caresses replace words. Until the end.