Dementia and resurrection
Our culture’s judgment on dementia comes down to three words. The first is deficit. No one has a positive association or reaction in relation to dementia. It’s all subtraction from regular life, all taking away, all negative. There’s nothing good to say about it. It’s a curse from a wicked fairy, and there’s no magic wand to wave it away.
The second word is decline. For dementia the arrow only goes one way, from bad to worse. There are no recovery stories, no websites with breakthrough diets or amazing parent turnarounds. It never gets better. It just goes downhill. It’s a story of decline.
The third word, the one lurking in the back of every conversation about dementia, is death. Our society looks on dementia as a living death. Facing up to dementia as the sufferer or the patient is like grieving a bereavement. I’ve presided at funerals many times for those who’ve spent the last chapter of their life living with dementia. It’s as if the family members have faced two losses. Often they’re very confused about whether this second occasion is a release, because the dementia has seemed like a prison, and any way out of the prison, even death, must be a release. And it’s not always clear if the release is for the sufferer or for the family.
