Attending to the Suffering of Dementia: A Practical Theology Approach

ABSTRACT According to Eleonore Stump, narratives like the book of Job are especially rich resources for addressing issues of suffering and theodicy. Although the book of Job may be about many things, starting with the assumption that Job has dementia gives us a rich resource for understanding this type of suffering and ways to survive it. In this article, I propose a practical theology approach to the suffering of dementia that gives epistemic privilege to the sufferers, starting with close attention to the stories of Maria Bons-Storm and Christine Bryden, while asking what insights Job’s narrative may have for the experience of losing a personal narrative. I conclude by showing how the Job narrative can be used by dementia sufferers to preserve narrative cohesiveness and meaning by reorienting the sufferer to his or her own story. I do this while recognizing that the interpretation of the meaning of suffering belongs to the sufferer alone.