My mother's fading memory and life
What is God's plan for the senile? Certainly not euthanasia.
This is a story of Alzheimer’s disease, a robber merciless and cold.
Never speak harshly to an older man, but appeal to him respectfully as you would to your own father. Talk to younger men as you would to your own brothers. Treat older women as you would your mother, and treat younger women with all purity as you would your own sisters. Take care of any widow who has no one else to care for her.
Timothy 5:1-3
My mother can no longer remember any recent event or meeting. She can only understand the moment. She can engage in conversation, but not if the matter involves a recent event. She can only recall moments decades old, personal ones with emotional trauma. She no longer remembers my birthday or my birth or my childhood. At dinner recently, she used a ridiculously miniature salt spoon on a bowl of soup. I gently switched the implements. My wife and I were shaken. I found no humor in it.
My fathers both passed away in 2021: the one who made me, who I never really knew, and the one who loved my mother. He was her everything, and she was his. They were due for some happiness when they met in 1989, both of them twice divorced. He had a good life, passing at nearly 90, and provided many lovely years to my mother. In his last years he was mostly deaf, which was merciful in a way because he could not hear my mother’s disturbing repetitions: anecdotes, turbulent emotions and inexplicable depressions. When he died, her grief was as wet sand, heavy and clinging, abrasive if brushed. It was best to let it dry and fall away.
During the stupid and vacant Covid years, I could see my mother’s troubles compounding. At first, it was hard to attribute her cognitive symptoms solely to dementia given her poor health and age. Her diet was bad, she was sedentary, chronically dehydrated, over-medicated and under-stimulated. Her doctor never initiated any diagnosis or treatment until I demanded he do so.
He asked my mother to draw a clock face with numbers. She tried, but the results were much like the one below. She knew it was a poor drawing and this agitated and depressed her. He then asked her to draw the hands so that the clock read 11:10. She could not. Sensing her defeat, I asked her to draw 12 noon, which she did. That moment was a child-like joy for her.
A clock at noon can also be a clock at midnight. For mother, she is fated to feel emotions from events she cannot remember. She does retain some, for now.
She keeps her many scripts in hand: the time her mother embarrassed her at her wedding, the time her sister stole from her, the time she asked my father to leave the house, the bum uncle who asked for money. Some scripts reemerge after a time and some have been forgotten entirely. Sadly, they all involve a trauma, a betrayal, or a humiliation. These conversations can go on for hours. I have no choice but to listen kindly and ask a glib question here and there. This is the only kind conversation in which she can engage. Invariably, there are a few tangential memories off the script but there is no point in asking about when or where or who. Doing so only agitates her when she cannot remember. More recently, some facts have been changed and some events entirely delusional.
In her worst moments, always in tears, she asks why God has not taken her, for what reason is she still here. Her family is all gone she says (except for me and my wife and kids) and she says she has no friends (except for the ones with whom she dines, visits and walks daily). I admit this angers me some; am I not family? Doesn’t she notice the good company around her? It is easy to feel unappreciated. She no longer has the capacity for that kind of gratitude.
Sometimes she says she just wants to go to sleep and never wake up. It hurts me to hear her talk this way. The joy of a visit, a call, or an outing no longer lingers into the later hours of the day. Without any memory of these loving moments her solitude and loss is unbearable.
So why is she here? What purpose does she serve? What is her utility? She would certainly fail to justify her existence before a Life Board.
Above: George Bernard Shaw makes a great argument for snuffing useless people
Let us use our reason and state the obvious: the cost of caring for the non-productive elderly is astronomical. The elderly will exhaust Medicare soon, Social Security in about 10 years and spend whatever is left in their estates on futile, life-extending medical care. To what end are these people, like my mother, kept alive? Sure, we love them and they find joy in seeing us and their grandchildren, but our ephemeral sentiment is no excuse to burden the system and diminish estate savings that ought to enhance the lives of younger people. Great minds, like Cass Sunstein (who wants to “nudge” us to be better), have provided reasoned guidance on how to do this.
Reason dictates this to be true: People who produce nothing are a drag on all of society. Since the senile elderly produce nothing (except sentimentality) how are they different than the common wastrels, the indolent and addicted?
One important way they are different is they often have estates which can be immediately liquidated and distributed to the heirs and to society in general though estate taxes. Also, a lot of these people presided over systemic injustice and made money through exploitation and bigotry. Euthanizing the non-productive elderly would be profitable, a windfall for the ages and even act as form of social justice. Not since the Knights Templar were burned would so much cash flow into the coffers of the young. Most of these people won’t even know what is happening anyway. It is a mercy, a gift. Yes?
No.
I am not a reasonable man in the Cass Sunstein sense. I am sometimes irrational, tossed about with sin and emotion and desires. I am imperfect and un-perfectible. I love my mother, I owe her my life. Mr. Sunstein’s arguments are certainly rational, but devoid of any constraining moral principle, as was Aktion T4 both rational and without morality. Rationality and morality are not synonyms and, since the Enlightenment, are often enemies. Mr. Sunstein does not advocate euthanasia in his paper, but he is a follower of one Judge Richard Posner, a euthanasia advocate.
What is God’s plan for my mother? What is His plan for all the demented elderly, those with Down’s syndrome, and schizophrenics? It is an arrogant question: it is not for me or anyone to know what His plan is. We only have to allow our loved one’s lives to take their course whatever the annoyances and whatever the cost without condition.
All that and God said not to do that “well reasoned” euthanasia bullshit.
But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
1 Timothy 5:8
So sorry to hear that your mom is (and you are) going through this. You paint a poignant picture of what it's like for her and for you to interact with her now. I have to agree with your conclusion as well--who are we to decide for others? My dad died during Covid, at almost 99, in a nursing home where none of us could visit and where, because of the sudden loss of his daughters going to see him, his confusion increased and he became angry and depressed (he hadn't been before). I think many elderly suffered similar fates during the last 3 years. Hoping your mom finds some peace before she goes, and that you do, too.
Great post, and sorry to hear about your mother.
Most of my relatives are in Canada, where MAID (medical assistance in dying) has become a big issue. One of the major news outlets up there did make an economic argument about how much could be saved on last year of life treatment.