Though it is nothing she would have wished for, in a relatively short time Nancy Borowick became an expert in photographing death.

First it was her father, Howie, 58, who died from pancreatic cancer weeks after her photo essay on his illness was published in The Times in late 2013. Almost a year to the day after his death, her mother, Laurel, 59, died last Dec. 6 after a 20-year battle with breast cancer. Ms. Borowick now has a second set of images that tell her mother’s story.

That wasn’t the original plan. Ms. Borowick, 29, had started photographing her mother in 2009 for a class project at the International Center of Photography. The idea was to chronicle her fight against a recurrence of breast cancer.

Ms. Borowick had wanted to learn more about the treatment process, and trailing her mother would let them spend more time together. The daughter didn’t know a lot about cancer then. She had expected to tell a hopeful story — her mother, who exercised faithfully and ate right, had beaten cancer in the 1990s and had been healthy for more than a decade.

Then, in December 2013, came the unexpected twist: her father’s pancreatic cancer, with a life span that was counted in months rather than years.

That first essay was largely a love story, her parents going through treatment together, taking chemotherapy side-by-side, celebrating the good days, surviving the bad, together. That spring there was another twist, Nancy’s decision to marry in time for her parents to walk her down the aisle, more photos about love.

This second photo essay is all about death.

“We are scared of death and I think that is in large part because we hide it away, out of sight and avoid it until we have to,” she wrote.

“I’ve gained a lot of perspective since my father died and no moment was wasted this past year with my mother.”

There are other reasons the photos of her father’s death have such a different feel from the photos of her mother’s. Howie Borowick was a public person, a highly successful trial lawyer, so good at what he did that companies sometimes would settle out of court rather than face him in court. He was outgoing, fast to make friends, open with strangers, terrible at keeping secrets, funny in a noisy way, a person who loved to preen and never tired of his own stories.

Laurel Borowick was a private person, also a lawyer, but she had given up the law to raise their three children. She was quieter, thoughtful, introspective, observant, amusing, nurturing, involved in her community and very well read. Howie was a doer. Laurel was an intellectual in the sense that ideas dominated her thinking. She made a list of books she wanted to read before she died. And as anyone who had been married to Howie Borowick for 34 years would have to be, she was an excellent listener, much to the benefit of her children.

Laurel Borowick was the kind of person who didn’t want to impose on people. Howie was sure he wasn’t.

It is not a coincidence that many of the photos of Laurel are taken in their home and are about family. The home she had created for them was her masterwork.

This photo essay is a series of progressions toward death, taken by a photographer who knew what was coming.

First, the machinery that forestalls death. When the oxygen tank arrived, they didn’t think Laurel needed it yet, but soon it was ever-present. “With a twenty-five-foot tube attached, the machine, which she playfully called WALL-E after the cartoon character, rolled along behind her as she went from room to room, slowly and cautiously,” Nancy wrote.

When she could no longer do aerobics, Laurel still had grocery shopping. Then she couldn’t shop, but could read and watch television. She couldn’t concentrate enough to read, but could still listen to people read to her and to music.

“She lost her ability to communicate,” Nancy said. “First it was speech, then nodding, until there was no sign other than the occasional grimace of pain.”

Laurel went silent but was present. And finally, that great mystery of life, the soul that makes us human, disappeared — rises to heaven, a religious person might say — and there is only stillness.

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