This past week we celebrated Corpus Christi – The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.
How many of us took time to celebrate, to recognize, and to pray in thanksgiving for the gift of the Eucharist? How many of us savored this solemnity, accompanying our loved ones living with dementia in doing the same?
When was the last time your loved one living with dementia received Holy Communion? Was taken to Adoration or had Jesus in the Eucharist brought to them for a moment of prayer?
Many times over the past 20 years of accompanying those living with dementia, I have witness the power of the Eucharist in the lives of those living with dementia. There is something about it, something I can’t put my finger on, how it has the ability to change someone living with dementia, if only for a moment. Much like our prayer, simply because we have receive the Eucharist or prayed the prayers does not mean we are cured. God doesn’t work that way. But the Eucharist has never failed to bring comfort to those who believe. It has never failed to nourish our souls. It never ceases to draw us closer into relationship with Christ.
I recently contributed part of my grandmother’s story of faith with the National Catholic Register. And while I spoke mostly to those moments when there was a noticeable change in my grandmother’s presence shortly after receiving Communion or engaging in a moment of faith, the Eucharist never cured her, her faith never took away her dementia, but it carried her through her dementia journey. It carried me. It carried our family.
There will be times when moments of faith and practicing the faith may seem to go unnoticed, un-remarkable, and un-impactful. But we cannot see the person’s soul, read their heart, or know how God is working through them and speaking to any individual in that chapter of their story. Because of this, we continue on, we offer the Sacraments, to pray with and for those living with dementia, and we trust in God’s plan for each life until one’s last breath, and they are called home to Heaven.
Here is the story I shared with EWTN and if you would like to read the article that resulted in sharing this story, click HERE.
My Grandmother was diagnosed with Vascular Dementia the in summer of 2005. The years of high blood pressure taking their toll and the loss of my Poppa in 2003, forcing to us find answers, new solutions, and better ways to care for her as she got older. Daily Mass and nightly Rosary (always the Sorrowful Mysteries) continued to bookend her days up until the last few months of her life. Her faith, her relationship with Christ found ways to continue to grow as the dementia was taking away her independence, her ability to live at home, her memory.
Her Catholic faith, and the community it fostered in her small Wisconsin town, provided a gift that allowed her to live fully alive with dementia. Listening to hymns, attending Mass, saying prayers together, sharing that others are praying for her, all put a sparkle in her eye even on the worst of days. The Franciscan Sisters of Christin Charity that worked at the Home where she lived in the final years helped make sure the dignity of the faith was alive in her life.
I saw early on how the faith, and more specifically the Sacraments become the greatest “item” in her care plan. It was markedly different than the experience my grandfather (her husband) had at a different community some years prior. Daily Mass, pastoral visits form staff, Confession, daily prayers, and people from her parish regularly visiting her made her time in skilled care, in the mid-late stages of dementia beautiful, connected, and joyful.
The last time I saw my grandmother, December 30th 2011, just two weeks before she died, was a good day for her, we were able to have a 2 hours of conversation, of sitting in each other’s company, but it was when I spoke about becoming a Eucharistic Minister for the Sick and Homebound ministry at my parish in New York that she sat up a bit straighter, the tone of her voice a bit stronger, and I was able to see the grandma I knew as a young girl.
That experience was for me the culmination of the importance of the Eucharist even with dementia. That all those moments I would see her coming back from Mass, it was not my imagination thinking she was better because of the Eucharist. It was a Spiritual Memory that cannot be described in any other form of memory. She never forgot her prayers, her faith nor the people that formed her in her faith. They transcended the memory loss occurring in her mind. These were important. But, it was the Sacraments that could lift her out of a bad day, a day filled with suffering, struggles, and the progression into the depths of dementia. It was the Eucharist that brought joy to her days. It was the parish community that visited her (along with her family) that held her up and away from isolation. It was the hymns that helped her move and recall memories we though were lost. It was the Rosary that helped her find peace amid fear, sorrow, and the unknowns.
Our faith is so much more than a routine or ritual. It is so much more than an identity. When we take the time to keep the faith alive throughout dementia, we find the cross is a little lighter to carry. We find that our relationship with Christ continues to grow and sustain us. Some may see it as a fluke, others the imagination of hope, but for us, as Catholics, we see the movement of the Holy Spirit, the transcendent beauty of the Sacraments, and the promise of eternal life with the Father.