When I read articles like this, I cannot help but think that God is love.
The author's father had Alzheimer's, a disease that many people generally assume robs a person of their humanity. It strikes a certain fear in me because my grandmother had it, and I was too young to care when she died. But the man in the article shows that human dignity is not inherently tied to the ability to remember what one did five minutes ago.
This is why I am absolutely horrified by attempts to perfect the human race through genetic cleansing. It seems that the more perfect we become, the more inhuman we become. It is only the truly metaphysically myopic person who believes that a girl born with the breast cancer gene cannot live a life worth living. "Life unworthy of life" stands up there with "Work Will Set You Free" as one of the most damnably cold-hearted phrases to ever be uttered by the mouths of men. Who are we, the sons and daughters of perdition, to say which life is worthy of life, when we all hold it so cheaply?
I pray that when my time comes, I go with even just half the grace and dignity this man did. I'd trade being able to wipe my own ass for that if it has to come down to it.
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