Matriarch (‘matrarc’ in Irish) is a collaborative project with my mother on memory, keepsakes, her love of elephants and recent onset of dementia. The term for the female elephant who leads the herd is matriarch and she often holds the longest memory. Memories fade and blur. Some are vivid and detailed. Using archival photography, double exposure and snippets of audio-recorded interviews of my mother, we examine memory and how the objects we keep and cherish connect us not only to our hippocampus, but to our past, like gears within a time machine.