George Will’s mother died at 98, after a long period of dementia. He wrote a very touching tribute to her, while exploring the ravages of the long process (alliteration notwithstanding):
Dementia, that stealthy thief of identity, had bleached her vibrant self almost to indistinctness, like a photograph long exposed to sunlight.
It is said that God gave us memory so we could have roses in winter. Dementia is an ever-deepening advance of wintry whiteness, a protracted paring away of personality. It inflicts on victims the terror of attenuated personhood, challenging philosophic and theological attempts to make death a clean, intelligible and bearable demarcation.
(I know, I know: two Will links in two days? Sue me.)
