On Disability

Oh my goodness! Pat Robertson's comments about Alzheimer's being like "a walking death" are really horrible. He says that a husband of a woman with Alzheimer's might divorce her before seeing other people, but should first make sure that she has custodial care.

Not only does this violate the Christian view of marriage, but this expresses a very narrow view of what it means to be a person and of what it means to be alive. It conveys the idea that being alive requires a high level of rationality. As the ABC video I linked to points out, feelings and the ability to connect often continue in Alzheimer's patients, even when memory is gone.

I have no experience with Alzheimer's, but when I was young, I knew my great-grandmother, who suffered numerous trans ischemic attacks--small strokes that have a similar result to that of Alzheimer's. My grandmother cared for her mother-in-law through these attacks. In addition to the fact that even with heavy dementia, my great-grandmother continued to be a person and to have a personality, the care that she received from my grandmother was an incredibly important act. I don't know just yet the words to express this, but this isn't the point at which you detach yourself from your relationship to someone, whether it be marriage or otherwise. Watching my grandmother care for her mother-in-law was incredibly influential for me.

By the way, the video that I linked to was strange in suggesting that couples discuss now what they would want if one of them got Alzheimer's. What a horrible idea! And I say that as a person who is always thinking about the worst case scenario. It's as if anything decided between two people in the marriage is the right thing for them. Then again, that seems to be the only way that we can conceive of people these days--as rational actors.