This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in which dementia was one of the themes chosen by guest editor Carey Mulligan:
When I was a Vicar in Leicestershire I was constantly surprised by visits to elderly people who suffered from some form of dementia. Now usually silent, play a harvest hymn or sing a Christmas carol and they would join in. I well remember the agony of a wife no longer recognised by her husband, and her bemusement when he broke his silence and started singing.
With dementia it seems as if the person we love has entered a different world, and it is those who remember all too well who feel the deep sense of loss and bereavement.
Some things go very deep. And when all else has become submerged into a different sort of consciousness, a vestige of deeper identity sometimes survives. Is it just the poetry? Or the tune? Or what?
These are not insignificant questions for anyone coping consciously with the onset of their own dementia or the almost-disappearance of someone they have loved for decades. When our memory has gone, who are we? And, I might add, why do we still matter?
Memory is so important to our sense of who we are that the loss of it is always going to be grievous. So, there are two responses that I as a Christian would venture in the face of this experience.
First, the creation narratives in Genesis (which address ‘why’ questions and not ‘how’ questions) state simply that human beings are made in the image of God. All Christian ethics emerge from this. That is why every human being is ultimately valuable, worth loving and capable of redemption. So, losing my own sense of identity does not reduce my intrinsic worth. If I forget God, God does not forget me. Or, as the prophet Isaiah put it to a people who feared for their future, “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”
Secondly, the liturgical shaping of the year by festivals like Christmas is designed to instil deep within us – from cradle to grave – a sense of individual and communal identity. The people of Israel entering the land of promise were required to tell stories that would be handed down the generations, accompanied by simple rituals involving stuff and action – no disembodied spirituality here. This ensured that the memory was formed and recalled. It was also so that people inhabited the memory of who they were and where they had come from; it wasn’t just that life rolled on in some formless way without the waymarkers of identity.
Dementia raises big questions. But, maybe the carols get sung by the silent because they grew up hearing, telling and living the narrative of God who never forgets his people. In an age when so many rituals and the repetition of stories are losing their grip, this faces us with the question of what will form our generation’s children and root their sense of meaning and value.
December 27, 2016 at 10:56 am
Reblogged this on hungarywolf.
December 27, 2016 at 10:59 am
Some of it is definitely the music. Try reciting the words of Jerusalem without reference to Hubert Parry’s tune: I promise you that you won’t be able to.
But some of it is the fact that people sang together, at school, in church, in the pub. What’s going to be interesting is when the generation comes through (as it will in 30-40 years) where people didn’t sing together and don’t have music to lean on. (But by then, I suspect that granny culling will be an accepted part of modern life).
December 27, 2016 at 5:23 pm
“My sister Susan,” answered Peter shortly and gravely, “is no longer a friend of Narnia.”
“Yes,” said Eustace, “and whenever you’ve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, ‘What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.’” From “The Last Battle”, by CS Lewis.
This is the problem presented by Susan Pevensie, whose “forgetting” of her true self, the shared experiences and love of Aslan, cause such grief for her family and friends. To them the Susan they knew was gone. A separation made all the worse when all but Susan die and are taken to the real Narnia. But the children’s parents are there too, killed in the same train accident. They knew nothing of Narnia. So, there is the possibility that Susan will find her way back. Her intrinsic worth is still there, not forgotten by Aslan, even though when Susan renounced Narnia, then she necessarily renounced Aslan, the resurrected, Christ-like lion she once loved. Susan will have experienced huge pain on learning of her loss of her family. Susan’s inevitably tragic life after the train wreck now gives a new sense of hope. It reminded me that some of God’s best work has yet to be accomplished on this side of heaven, and one of his most effective agents is pain. CS Lewis wrote that “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Dementia is a disease, and a cruel one. Susan made a choice, from free will. But like dementia sufferers, whose true identity will be restored when they enter God’s Kingdom, Susan has a journey in this life and the next, that will, if she allows it (and her pain of separation makes this likely, we are, after all, only human), also bring her back to her true self. There will be something of Aslan/ God in her heart that can never be erased, only submerged, until something calls it out.
December 30, 2016 at 11:07 pm
Listened to this thought for the day and recognised your voice. It was a good few years ago that you ministered to my father, though I have never forgotten your kindness. during what were very difficult times for me – for numerous reasons. Happy New Year to you and yours Bishop Nick! From Joy Fellows (daughter of the late Henry Tyers)
December 31, 2016 at 9:35 am
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December 31, 2016 at 9:43 am
Lovely to hear from you, Joy. I hope you are well. Happy New Year!