Support the Lin Myszkowski Documentary Project

We are making a documentary about devotion, commitment, marriage, and sickness.

In the spring of 2019, our mom was diagnosed with a rare neurodegenerative disease called Posterior Cortical Atrophy. At the time, she was struggling with her vision, mild memory issues, and depression that accompanied the loss of abilities that felt so core to her. In the five and a half years since, her disease has evolved tremendously – now, it resembles traditional Alzheimer’s and has diminished her cognition and independence profoundly.

It is wrenching and sad to watch someone you love decline in this way. It is doubly hard to hold in your mind an image of them as they are today alongside who they were before they got sick. But that project - of recognizing Lin before PCA, and Lin after it - feels like a worthy one to undertake in ways both big and small.

Lin’s life and the story of her care features an important co-star: our dad, a high school choir teacher in the final year of a 35 year career. His steady devotion to her in the face of loss, grief and labor has been remarkable to behold, and our film aims to capture the complex texture of a primary caretaker’s role.

We realize that the path forward for our mom is uncertain and that our time with her is limited. As such, we’re endeavoring to spend the next year working on a documentary about Lin Myszkowski’s life. Our mom has worn many hats in her sixty-five years: opera singer, teacher, spouse, friend, activist, public servant. This project will give us an opportunity to explore the people and stories that comprise our mom’s multidimensional history, as well as a platform to share the arc of our parents’ relationship – and how it has evolved as Lin’s disease has progressed.

Alzheimer’s and dementia are part of life for so many families. The way that these diseases rob both patients and loved ones of the characteristics that make a person who they are makes them so hard to talk about frankly or frequently. We hope this project will ease the burden of privacy or shame that can accompany such a diagnosis, while honoring the legacy that Lin is still carving out in all of our lives.

We are grateful for donations to support this project. We’ll be drawing from Sophia’s training as a documentarian and Olivia’s writing background, but hope to support the project with better equipment than we currently have, and to hire a professional crew to enhance the production value of the documentary. We believe our parent’s story has tremendous value in being shared widely, and require financial support to make that possible. In addition to monetary support, we appreciate references or recommendations for Minnesota-based cinematographers and sound people.

Thank you for your consideration!

Sophia and Olivia Myszkowski