What does it look like to live fully while dying? Photographer Maranie Staab spent five months with Hanna and the Careforce community—the chosen family providing round-the-clock care—documenting what she calls “love in action.”

The work pairs Maranie’s images with Hanna’s own words about the experience of ALS. Not clinical observations but lived truth: being packaged like a surfboard at night with pillows, silicone stickers, sheepskin, ventilator mask. The magnetic pull toward being held. The longing to bury her nose in a rosebush one more time. The cat of loss purring on her lap as she watches the world continue without her.

Hanna writes:

“Part of dying is being vividly alive also. I feel stripped of my filters. Please just be in the moment with me. There is nothing to fix.”

The gallery asks the question that matters:

“Dear one, I’m so curious about what it is like for you. How are you living? What keeps you going? How might we support each other as we lose what’s precious?”

Maranie’s photographs show the answer—people showing up, bodies holding bodies, community as constellation. This coordinated selflessness born of genuine care provides “an example of what is possible as we ‘walk each other home.'”

The work has been exhibited both online through Social Documentary Network and as a physical installation at the Robert Smith Gallery in Pittsburgh (June 2025). Maranie continues documenting Hanna’s community on her Instagram feed.