California Dreamin 7

For the last month, I have been serving as a full time Chaplain for a Hospice organization in Southern Calif. where many of my patients are Dementia patients. It is this very interesting place of being out of touch with the world and reality, and yet having a different reality all their own. It makes me wonder what causes this condition, whether it is a condition of purely biological happenings in our brains, or a condition brought on by other factors, like possibly not being able to handle parts of our own reality; the choices we've made in our lives. I wonder this because at least two of my patients are women who abandoned their children as younger women. One of them hears voices, and becomes possessed by a fear of being alone in her room, believing that these voices are threatening harm to her. As a Chaplain and pastor, it becomes an interesting challenge in knowing exactly how to minister to their spirits, being that we depend so much on rational thought processes, conversation, and asking questions. For a Dementia patient, we can ask questions and the response will most likely be "I don't know" or "I can't remember."But somewhere in the lack of awareness, the loss of memory, or the confusion, is a reality all their own, and very real emotions that are all in the moment, and if we can offer them grace and forgiveness, and the reality of someone who expresses a type of love for them in the midst of their confusion, lack of memory, or their tormented conditions. I want to believe that we are ministering to them effectively. I think it is the only thing we can give them.

One man held a position of great power in his lifetime and now stands in his home in diapers, facing a wall, and having to be helped to a chair by his home health aide. He is angry, and expresses emotions reminiscent of his days of power as he kicks me out of his house for asking a stupid question. As I leave, a little stunned, I thought, "Yeah it was a stupid question, 'How are you today?' " And I can enter his pain, of having his reality cruely stolen from him, and I will go back to see him another day and phrase my questions differently. The good news for me is he won't remember my stupid questions of the past visit. It is a place of grace that my dementia patient offers to me.