Dementia and Robert Munsch

 

There is a recent New York Times about Robert Munsch, the Order of Canada storyteller best known for best-selling books such as The Paperbag Princess and Love You Forever, the latter about the enduring love between a parent and child.  

I hadn't realized that Munsch spent seven years preparing for priesthood as a Jesuit before leaving the order. An American, he eventually made his way to Canada with his wife where they worked with children. He discovered that telling stories calmed kids at nap time and it was the director of the university daycare centre who convinced Robert to begin writing the stories down. Through the years of fame there was nothing he liked better than to spontaniously show up at a school where classrooms had written to him and tell stories.

Robert Munsch is now 80 and has Parkinson's disease and dementia. His sense of balance is precarious and his memory is failing, although he still remembers many of his stories and can tell them with gusto. For the most part his ability to create stories has departed. 

Robert has decided to eventually avail himself of Medical Assistance in Dying and while he is no hurry to depart this life he's aware that he must have the mental capacity to make an informed decision to end his life.  He had a brother who was a monk -- a brother who was a brother and a Munsch who was a monk? -- who died of the terrible Lou Gehrig's disease. Every measure was taken to prolong his life even though he wanted to die. 

There is so much here about what gives life meaning and how we maintain dignity as the light fails. No doubt his brother's religious order insisted that he continue on because this was somehow God's will, but why do we impose medical intervention on those who are suffering? 

I believe that a civil society must provide every support to the sick and the vulnerable and it is a moral failure and a sin not to do so. Isn't it also sin to insist that some people live when they are ready to go? If we trust in a life to come why hold on so fiercely to this life on behalf of others? 

I don't have ready answers for these murky waters but I trust that God, Father and Mother of us all loves us forever.