What is our obligation to our spouses? If they are fully incapacitated by the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease, if their identity and memory have been lost, if they can no longer connect with you, do our vows of marriage to stand by each other "in sickness and health" still hold?
That’s the question that was recently emailed to Pat Robertson’s long-running show, The 700 Club, and which he attempted to answer on the air. The writer said he had a friend whose wife suffered from Alzheimer’s and could no longer recognize him. The man had started to see another woman, the writer told Robertson, the 81-year-old evangelist and broadcaster, and wanted to know what to do.
"This is a terribly hard thing," Robertson said. "I hate Alzheimer's. It is one of the most awful things, because here’s the loved one — this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly that person is gone."
He went on, "I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but to make sure she has custodial care, somebody looking after her."
As for the marital vow of "till death do us part," Robertson said, "This is a kind of death…I certainly wouldn’t put a guilt trip on you if you decided that you had to have companionship."
Robertson’s reply ignited a firestorm of comments. Many Christian leaders said his response was not only wrong, but cruel and a repudiation of the biblical sacrament of marriage. Experts in Alzheimer’s care and treatment, however, acknowledged that in many families, spouses needed to make their own personal decisions as they coped with a wrenching situation.
There are many well-known cases of Alzheimer’s patients who lose connection to their spouses and find companionship with fellow patients in nursing homes. But healthy spouses may decide they need companionship as well, some experts say. On the other hand, they note, it is incorrect in most cases to refer to patients as "gone," or to call their lives “a kind of death," because even late-stage patients tend to recognize the people closest to them.
When we asked readers on the Grandparents.com Facebook page what they thought of Robertson's advice, more than 120 people replied, and most felt strongly that he was wrong. Among their comments:
"It's in sickness and in health, till death do us part, not 'till a kind of death.'"
"Even if they can't remember you, you are still bound by those vows."
"I'm so glad my mother didn't feel this way when my father was diagnosed."
"Any DECENT husband or wife would stick beside their spouse."
"My husband passed away with cancer. I never dreamed of leaving his bedside at all, even when he did not even know I was there."
"I live with and love my husband with Alzheimer's and words cannot express the horrible life I lead now but to divorce him? I frankly DO NOT THINK I could look at myself in a mirror if I abandoned him. We had a GREAT life and that is what I hold on to now! The great memories keep me going."
Where do you stand on this issue? Share your thoughts in the Comments area below, then find more hot topics on Grandparents.com:
Home
