Yesterday, in my introductory pastoral counseling class, we discussed caring for families afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease. It reminded me of a particular Alzheimer's patient in a previous church.Tim had been a doctor during his professional life, but his passion was for art. He used a wide variety of media, but most preciously, watercolors. He was fond of sitting in his backyard garden painting the wonders of the natural world.
After he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he developed a particular fascination with colors. Tim often pointed out everyday objects, such as a leaf or a stone, and marveled at its hue -- as though the disease had gifted him with an ability to see a depth to color that the rest of us were blind to. To Tim, color had become a profound concept -- like a whole different way of seeing the world.
As he slipped away from our world, Tim had apparently come to believe that he was no longer in the material, temporal world, but had stepped inside a watercolor canvas. In his mind, he was literally part of a painting -- to his uninhibited delight.
I can't conceive of a more beautiful dementia. May we all be so afflicted.
1 comment:
The thing I'm most afraid of is slipping into Alzheimers...or even worse, my wife do so. But if the day does come for me to be that person who doesn't know the world around him anymore, I hope I can be as lucky as Tim. May God bless and heal all the Tims and other dementia patients of the world. May they forget the troubles of the world around them.
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