The “Core” of the Dementia Patient

Affliction can lead to blessing. Stripped of social, occupational, cognitive, volitional identity, the dementia patient is left bare. But the core, the true self, still glows. In fact, it might be more clearly known in its state of purity, if we make the effort to find it. I would argue that we owe it to our fellow human beings, even to the world, and certainly to God, to do our best to find it. For there, in that center, remain those primal elements which connect us with the divine, the “metals” of our sun, the “stuff” of stars. Our present-day world cannot afford to lose one element in the treasure of this human core.