My grandfather suffers from dementia. I don’t know if suffers is the correct term though. Sometimes I think that he is much better off not knowing reality. There is a lot that could be said about that, but I will save that for another time.
Although, not altogether in his right mind, he maintains a hold upon rational thought and sense faculties, and this makes it possible to hold pretty coherent conversation with him. One day I asked him what the worst part of getting old was. His answer made a profound impact on me.
He said the one thing he didn’t mind was getting up each day and seeing that your spouse was another day older. He said that age was a thing that snuck up on you. One day you are 60. The next day you are 65. He said that he forgets how old he is. He thinks he can do things that he can’t anymore. The worst thing was not that he didn’t know where he was, who he was with, or that he couldn’t remember things. My grandfather said that the worst part of getting old for him was losing his coordination.
It is a lack of ability that is so troubling. I realized that I value being able to do things. I think society values ‘doing’ much more than it should. The very old and very young are liabilities. They are useless wastes of resources because they can’t do much of anything.
There more and more I talk with my grandpa, the more I realize that this is utterly false. His personhood is not tied to what he can and cannot do. By extension, my value does not come from what I achieve. I can be loved for no other reason than because I exist. I do not need a ‘reason’ to love other people. I hold people in high regard because they are intelligent, beautiful, rich, or talented.
Yet sometimes I realize that none of this matters in the least bit.
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