Massachusetts mom is honored by her grown kids in picture-perfect portraits

As her mother, Anne, endured Alzheimer's disease, Massachusetts mom and small business owner Julie Centrella commissioned a series of portraits of her mom in an effort to capture her spirit; photographer Joe Wallace took these photos as part of a series he's been doing on Alzheimer's patients to help de-stigmatize the disease.

"In the beginning, she was good at covering things up, so we didn't really know how bad it was."  "My mom’s speech began to be affected, her sentences were jumbled, and it was getting really hard to even carry on a conversation." Photographer Wallace strives to capture not the despair, fear, or futility of the disease — but the essence of the person who is suffering through it. "I wanted to share other people’s stories, using empathy as a way to help connect people who might be feeling alone." The family displayed Joe Wallace's photos of Anne Walsh at her funeral Mass this past December — as well as on her prayer cards.  Alzheimer's can mean "a lot of small losses along the way … In the end, there’s still the person in there somewhere." The fashion show, though interrupted by COVID-19 the last few years, "brings the community together while raising awareness about Alzheimer’s." "The [portraits] convey her love for us, even though she couldn’t really speak anymore when they were taken. It’s been a treasure to have them."  "Everyone has something [they’re dealing with], whether it’s dementia or breast cancer. We all have our struggles." 

"We had been watching my mother decline, and it was getting worse and worse," Centrella, 52, told Fox News Digital in an interview.