The Funeral Message for Someone With Long-Term Dementia

The Funeral Message for Someone With Long-Term Dementia

We have been considering the toughest sermons you’ll ever prepare.  The last one we dealt with was preaching at the funeral for a suicide.  In this post we turn to the funeral message for someone with long-term dementia including Alzheimers.  There are many things to consider in relationship to the care of someone with long-term dementia that will not be considered in this post.  Consider this resource as a way to get in touch with the many questions that must be faced by such a family.

Situations

I’ve had a few experiences with this situation.

Long-term Dementia Starting Young

Arnold developed dementia at a relatively young age.  His wife tried to continue life for them in as consistent a way as possible.  But the disease progressed.  I would visit the two of them occasionally, and found that Arnold  could have a meaningful conversation.  Questions about long ago opened up his memories.  I learned in those visits about growing up in Redlands, CA, about meeting his wife, and his many years working for Kraft.  True,   he repeated most stories in subsequent visits, but it was obvious that he loved God, loved his wife, and  sought to serve Him throughout his life.

Things got worse.  Arnold got the keys to the car one day, and somehow got out of the condo in which they lived without his wife knowing.  He disappeared.  For the next 4 days, nobody knew where he was, or what was happening to him.  Imagine the fear and anxiety in that family!  On the fourth day he called.  Surprisingly, he found his way to the local grocery store, but couldn’t find his way home.  Could someone help?  The odometer on his car showed that he drove something like 500 miles during those days.  The only thing he remembered was that  some young men helped him once, but other than that, the whole time was a blank.  He couldn’t remember anything.

Further restrictions made Arnold deteriorate even further.  A few months later, he didn’t wake up one morning.

A Strange Dementia

The other situation that I’ll describe for this post was a sister-in-law who was my age.  She married my older brother when she was 16, and amazingly, their marriage thrived over 52 years.  The last five years of her life, however, were colored by a creeping dementia.  Her neurologist said that it was a rare kind.  In this dementia, the patient would lose memories, but not like the typical patient.  Rather, if all your memories were represented by a bookshelf, in my sister-in-law’s case, books would be removed from various shelves, not just the most recent.  So gradually she forgot her children, her grandchildren, her work as a nurse, and eventually had no memory of marrying my brother, or even who he was at the end.

Considerations

The funeral message for someone with long-term dementia will need to reflect the following characteristics:

• First of all, know that those who grieve will have feelings and memories that go back to before the dementia came into their lives.  In fact, many such mourners report even some joy at remembering the good things about their loved one.
• Secondly, those who grieve also feel relief..  The daily care of someone with dementia is draining, and for some of those who grieve, there will be the sense of relief that the daily grind has ended.
• However, for some of those who grieve, the fact that their whole life revolved around the sickness of their loved one’s dementia creates a chasm in their life that deepens the grief.  They have to readjust and find new meaning in life.
• Often there are questions about God’s care for them.  Why does God allow such a devastating disease?  And why their family?

The Message

In the next post I’ll share the messages that I created for these two situations.