A few years ago our church Book Club read Lisa Genova’s powerful book Still Alice. It is the story of a highly educated and successful woman, a professor at Harvard, losing her thoughts and memories to Alzheimer’s disease. The book has now been made into a movie staring Julianne Moore as Alice and Alec Baldwin as her husband. I saw it last weekend. It is an excellent movie, quite faithful to the novel and Julianne Moore is quite deserving of the Oscar she won for her performance.
I have mentioned the movie to a few people and some say they can’t go and haven’t read the book because it is just too painful and strikes too close to home. Many families are feeling the impact of the disease. I looked up some facts on the Alzheimers web site. Approximately 15% of Canadians over the age of 65 are living with some kind of cognitive impairment including dementia. (2011 Statistics) This means that one in five Canadians over the age of 45 provide some form of care to seniors living with long-term health problems and one quarter of those caregivers are seniors themselves, a third of them over the age of 75. In 2011 family caregivers spent in excess of 444 million unpaid hours looking after someone with cognitive impairment, including dementia. This represents $11 billion in lost income and 227,760 full-time equivalent employees in the workforce. These figures are staggering, especially when we consider that our population is aging as the ‘Baby Boom” works its way through our society. (The first wave of the baby boomers turned 65 in 2011.) These numbers will only increase over the next few decades. As of 2013 more than 4.4 million people worldwide are living with dementia, or more that the total population of Canada.
In the novel and movie Alice, a fiercely independent woman struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her abilities are stripped away. Her family feels the stress of adjustment as this once able and in-control woman changes before their eyes. Each reacts in his or her own way and the fictional story presents both disappointment and hope. It is not an easy story to watch; in many homes it is not a story but a reality. It makes me wonder what role the church can play in supporting families and in providing a place of healing and care for those who face the dramatic changes from who they were to who they are becoming.
Has your family been effected by Alzheimer’s Disease? Do you see a role the church could play?
