For the past three years I have lived in Liberia, a small country in West Africa, with the only other Jesuit in the Republic. Let us call my Jesuit confrere George (not his real name). We have different apostolates. George is the pastor of the parish where we live; I teach in a graduate program at the Kofi Annan Institute for Conflict Resolution at the University of Liberia, about an hour’s drive from our rectory.
Over the past year and a half George and I have lived through the Ebola emergency. This was a challenging time, one that drove me both to pray more and to wash my hands frequently in chlorine solution.
Now George and I face a new situation. In Church last Sunday George announced to our parishioners that he had early-onset dementia. This explained his short term memory lapses as well as his heightened irascibility and other personality issues.
This was not a complete surprise to me. I had noticed George’s frequent memory lapses and had formed a hypothesis that he might have the beginnings of Alzheimer’s Disease. Just a week before his dramatic public announcement he accused me of leaving the water filter tap open in our residence and causing a massive spill of water on the floor. I had to tell George that I had not touched that filter for a long time. I wanted also to say that perhaps he had left it open himself, but I refrained lest we got into yet another argument.
So I now need once again to pray more and to ask the Lord for the wisdom to know how to be present to George in his dementia, if that is the problem, in a positive way and to do whatever I can to ease his various burdens. This Sunday, for instance, I am the chief presider and homilist at Mass.
Before I came to Liberia the WWJD movement was popular among younger Catholics in Canada. WWJD is an acronym for “What Would Jesus Do?” and is a method of discernment. Other than healing George of his condition no doubt Jesus quietly support him in his suffering.
One concern I have is that the dementia might take hold of George more rapidly than we expect and then I might find myself doing two jobs, pastor at the church and university professor, until George’s provincial can sort things out and send a new man into Liberia.
The statistics tell us that dementia is increasingly common both in North America and in Africa. It is one thing to know this in a general way, and quite another to face the issue in an up front and personal way that we are now doing.
Comparing Ebola and dementia is impossible. Both lead to loss and suffering. What is striking to me that George and I are living through both in the same year.