If you ended up having dementia, how would you like to be treated?” Is the question posed by John Swinton, the Scottish theologian and author of the book Dementia: Living in the Memories of God.
Swinton answers saying he hoped to be loved and cared for just for who I am, even if who I am is difficult for me and for others to recognize.
In the book Swinton says the question of “who I am” is complicated at the best of times it becomes more complicated when dementia strips our ability to remember “who I am”.
But God knows “who I am.” Psalm 139 is a prayer of thanksgiving celebrating that the Lord knows us. It says Lord you searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up you discern my thoughts from far away.
Dementia strips away the cognitive functioning of thinking, remembering, and reasoning. It interferes with daily life activities rendering people unable to control their emotions. It makes caregivers out of spouses, children, and family members, rendering them captive to the challenges that dementia creates.
The cruelty of dementia can make us wonder why God has forsaken us. Psalm 139: 19 says “In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, even when none of them as yet existed.” God is the writer of our lives, in his writing there were days of glory, days of despair, days of ordinary happenings and yes in the days of dementia days of forgetting “who I am.”
But God knows “who I am”.
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