By Rabbi Dovid Schwartz
Imagine this heartrending scene: You come to visit a frail old man, he is your father, grandfather or uncle. His mind is so addled and ravaged by Alzheimer’s that he doesn’t recognize his visitors, sadder still; the disease has so deleted or distorted his memory that he doesn’t “recognize†himself. For those who knew him as he once was his current desecrated state unleashes a torrent of clashing emotions ranging from pity, to contempt to revulsion to anxiety (this could happen to me!) to (shudder) thoughts that, if directed towards healthy members of our society, would be considered homicidal and criminal (Is he even himself anymore? Is he still a human being? What a lousy quality of life. Why doesn’t someone just put the poor old geezer out of his [our] misery?) Some of us have actually lived through scenes like this and don’t need to imagine it.
Now let’s modify the scene. Imagine if we could project a 3D hologram of the same person in the full flush and dynamism of his youth with his arm around the shoulder of, or, better yet, superimposed upon the entire body of, the ruined shell of a human being before us. Imagine further that these two images permanently fused so that we couldn’t look at the old man without concurrently seeing his younger clone. How might that change our attitude and emotional reaction? I believe it would cause a drastic change in the entire gamut of our auto-emotional responses. All euthanasia-cal designs would immediately cease. In spite of the wretched reality that meets our eyes we would begin relating to the patient with a dignity, respect and humanity more closely approximating what we used to accord to the man he once was than the Alzheimer’s patient he is today.
Read more Cherishing the Shards: A 17th of Tamuz Meditation