Last month I visited a lovely church in Criccieth and gave a talk on dementia and the effects of spiritual interventions. After talks I invite people to fill out a feedback form that asks, among other things, if they’d learnt anything they didn’t know before and if there was anything not included in the talk that they would like to be included. One of the forms had a question I’ve never been asked before – what purpose is there in the life of the person living with dementia (PLWD) ?
The question has more than one angle. For the PLWD, having a sense of purpose is central to their well-being, as it is for all of us. We know that each case of dementia is unique, a combination of the pathology (brain damage) and the individual’s personality. ‘Individuals with dementia still understand that helping out, being busy, lending a helping hand, giving to other people, being listened to, and feeling that they belong are important indicators of quality of life,’ writes Catherine Nakonetschny, director of social services at The Evergreens in Moorestown, NJ.
The question could also be querying the value of the person to others, now that he or she has dementia. In this case, it’s exposing our society’s values which are now far removed from Christian precepts. In both the Old and New Testaments, it’s clear that God values people for who they are, not for what they do or contribute. When Satan accused Job of worshipping God simply for His protection and benefits, God didn’t reply by listing Job’s achievements, but only what manner of man he was.
A person living with dementia brings to us a special ministry – the ministry of dependence. Being independent is a particularly Western attribute. ‘God did not design human beings to be independent,’ retired Pastor Roger Hitchings wrote in my first book, ‘Could it Be Dementia?’ ‘Independence is something that has come out of the world of psychology. God himself is a trinity, and the trinity is a mutually dependent being. You cannot think of the Father without the Son, and the Son does not function without the Spirit, and the Spirit is the Spirit of the Father – and God made man to be like Himself, to be a dependent being. God designed us to live in communities, and that’s why “family” is the core concept in the Scriptures. Independence is a fallacy, and just because someone needs someone else’s help, it doesn’t mean they are less than human.
‘It means that God has designed them to have the privilege of being served by others, and others have the privilege of serving. We are created by God to be mutually dependent, and to serve, and be served. It is a gift of God to be served by His people.’
More than any other illness, dementia shows how we are made in the image of God. As the disease progresses, the person can seem to change, but there is evidence that their essence, their person, remains. Often in later stages, when brain scans show the person shouldn’t be able to function at all, he or she may emerge through the fog for a while, with a lucidity that cannot be explained. A few weeks before he died with vascular dementia, my friend’s wife squeezed his hand and leaned in and asked him, ‘Who am I, David?’ With eyes barely open he replied, ‘You’re my Ruthie.’ He was still the same David.
