Fighting for our Lives: Mike Tyson, Memory, and the Plight of the Demented

I am a child of the 90’s. Well past the Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier bouts but before modern sensations such as Floyd Mayweather Jr. I did not grow up in a household that watched boxing, but I do remember the legendary tales Mike Tyson. Like other boxing stars he had a complicated history, questionable lifestyle choices, and even served time for criminal behavior. Growing up Tyson felt like an untouchable warrior who obliterated everything in sight – and he did, until he didn’t.

Professor Ted A. Kluck’s riveting book on Mike Tyson captures 15 stories from fighters who stepped in the ring with Tyson and lived to tell the story.[1] Kluck skillfully tells these stories and shows the reader how devastating boxing can be for these modern warriors. With each passing story you’re left feeling like the most important question every fighter faces is when to stop fighting.

I read these stories alongside a book on dementia – a whole different kind of fight.[2] By fighting here I mean working through the tension and struggle with grace – not actually fighting people with dementia![3] I was left wondering the same question: when should one stop fighting? I am often told, “if I ever lose my mind then just let me go” to which people mean to wave life’s white flag.

When it comes to dementia communities, caregivers, and loved ones alike can be tempted to “stop fighting.” I don’t shy away from the sensational or even colloquial language we use but we ought to acknowledge that calling anyone demented feels bad. This has gotten me thinking about the way we speak about people. We are quick to label. Pray for Uncle Jimmy, he has early on-set dementia and is losing his mind. Uncle Jimmy is demented – or his mind is at least. Right?[4] The way we speak about our brother and sisters with dementia can often tell us more about ourselves than it does about them.

Several years ago this moved front and center when televangelist Pat Robertson infamously responded on his program “The 700 Club” that it was acceptable/understandable to seek divorce from a person who had advanced to the late stages of dementia. Robertson noted, “this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly that person is gone.”[5] Since the spouse with dementia was not able to offer companionship and was no longer the “same person” it seems to be that they are essentially “dead, and theologically should be treated as such.”[6] They’re gone he said. This started no shortage of responses from the Christian community and rightfully so. Theologian Russell Moore remarked:

A woman or a man with Alzheimer’s can’t do anything for you. There’s no romance, no sex, no partnership, not even companionship. That’s just the point. because marriage is a Christ/church icon, a man loves his wife as his own flesh. He cannot sever her off from him simply because she isn’t “useful” anymore.[7]

Marriage vows matter. We’re sinful and break them; but marriage vows matter. We see Robertson’s comments and a rampant divorce culture and we think we understand. But this highlights why aging can be scary. For many, aging includes the fight of a lifetime – perhaps even more scary than squaring up against Tyson! The world looks at love in terms of cinematic romance and persons in terms of productivity. Robertson’s words have rattled around the minds of countless spouses who have watched their spouses dramatically shift and the memory of a love story becomes increasingly dim. They are no longer, as Hollywood would have it, in love with this person in front of them. But as Moore reminded us, that is precisely the point. St. Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 that marriage is about the gospel not about our love story – but about God’s love story.

We call dementia that name because we perceive the illness as the mind becoming demented. Many of us have not fully struggled with the idea of memory loss and what that means for us as children of God. We do not serve each other well by romanticizing illnesses that can be devastating. But we also do not serve each other well when we become theologically lost along the way. Christians are first and foremost children of God for whom the promises of Christ have been awarded. We are not our own but belong to God. In a world that wants to view us in terms of what we can contribute to society or in a marriage, we need to pause and reflect. Who are we? How do we handle the scary reality that some of us may find ourselves in a world where we cease to remember those closest to us – and perhaps cease to remember some of the most important aspects of ourselves.  

If you spend any amount of time with me talking about dying well you will hear me say something like, “dying well is not primarily about the prolongation of life indefinitely or even easing your suffering but is about dying distinctly as a Christian.” You will hear me lament the language that so-and-so “fought the good fight” meaning they tried to fight for life as much as they could as though that is what St. Paul was concerned about. Life matters, the promises of God matters, and dementia may change a lot, but it cannot pluck us from the love of God (Romans 8:28-39). We are God’s and trial and tribulation or even dementia can separate God’s elect from the promises of God.

Particularity matters. Philosopher Peter Singer has made headlines with his utilitarian ethics that have drove Christians wild for years – one reason being his views on the sanctity of human life. Of interest though is the documented history of when he was faced with honestly reflecting on the intersection of utilitarian ethics, our intrinsic value, and our social utility. His own mother came down with Alzheimer’s disease. Singer reflected:

“I think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really very difficult,” he said quietly. “Perhaps it is more difficult than I thought before, because it is different when it’s your mother.”[8]

This is oddly more humane than the televangelist above. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised when an atheistic utilitarian ethicist stumbles upon some nuggets of truth while televangelists stumble over emotionally driven absurdities. What struck me about this was as the interviewer commentated was a quiet response – almost as though Singer needed to whisper it. Singer noted that “perhaps” this is different when the ideal gives way to the real – when it is no longer “dementia patient” or “room 42” but Cora Singer. When mom has “lost her mind” she might cease to be warm and fuzzy, she might cease to be helpful in offering you love and encouragement, but she is still mom. She is still a person born in the image of God, has a shared history full of memories, and more importantly even when she forgets God does not. God remembers her.

So how do we fight this tough fight of aging and “losing our minds” while locating ourselves firmly within the reality that God remembers those who have been purchased by the blood of Christ? Swinton tells the story of his friend who ministered on an Alzheimer hospital unit in preparation for their ordination. On this unit patients would sing songs and the minister was left with the words of the Anglo-Catholic hymn for Maundy Thursday “According to Thy Gracious Word:

According to thy gracious word,
In meek humility,
This will I do, my dying Lord,
I will remember thee.

Thy body, broken for my sake,
My bread from heaven shall be;
Thy testamental cup I take,
And thus remember thee.

Gethsemane can I forget?
Or there thy conflict see,
Thine agony and bloody sweat,
And not remember thee?

When to the cross I turn mine eyes,
And rest on Calvary,
O Lamb of God, my sacrifice,
I must remember thee.

Remember thee, and all thy pains,
And all thy love to me:
When thou shalt in thy kingdom come,
Jesus, remember me.

This minister noted how those final words meant the world on that unit. In the end it matters most not what we remember but that we are remembered.[9] Our hearts are deceitful and our perceptions are skewed by living in this fallen world. I cannot dispel the fear some of us have in aging, but I can remind us of the gospel. We’re broken but we’re not gone. This is why weekly we confess our sins. We lay our sins at the feet of the cross and hear the sweet pardon. We regularly engage this rhythms of the forgiveness found in the gospel because we need it. We may forget who we are, but God will not. God remembers us because God knows us.

There probably is not a monetary value you could offer to convince me to step in the ring with Mike Tyson. I know who I am and who he is. I am also one who has said things like “I am horrified of losing my mind.” Swinton’s book reminded me that I have so much to learn. Many days at the ripe age of 34 I feel old. I know to some like my kids I am old. To some of you elderly folks you’re reading this and thinking “bless your heart.” We all have fears and anxieties and amid them all we are fueled by a culture obsessed with our identities. With that I want to close with words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his prison poem, “Who Am I?”:

Who am I? This or the other?

Am I one person today and tomorrow another?

Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,

And before myself contemptibly woebegone weakling? …

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine![10]

We’re obsessed with the question of who we are – who we really are – and that is why the fight of aging and dementia feels like the fight of a lifetime. That daunting question of our identity is why some of us think of aging and dementia and think it feels like a fight worth giving up on. Bonhoeffer shackled in despair reminds us that we are God’s children. The Bible tells the story of the demented to be sure but it also tells the story of those united to Christ in his resurrection. The plight of the demented is in the end a story full of promise. When we forget our keys, our kids names, or when we forget details that even now bring us to tears to think about – let us be reminded that whoever we are, God knows, we are God’s.

So, brothers and sisters, love one another and keep fighting the good fight of being faithful to Christ. When is it time to stop fighting? Moore writes,

Somewhere out there right now, a man is wiping the drool from an 85-year-old woman who flinches because she thinks he’s a stranger. No television cameras are around. No politicians are seeking a meeting with him.[11]

The glory absent, the affection gone cold, and the memories faded – God sees and God remembers. And like that thief on the cross we too will be remembered when we enter into paradise.

[1] Facing Tyson: 15 Fighters, 15 Stories – Ted A. Kluck.

[2] Dementia: Living in the Memories of God – John Swinton. There is nuance reasons medically and socially to think about dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and appropriate ways to differentiate them. Not all dementia is Alzheimer’s disease, for example. For the remainder of this essay the two can be thought of synonymously without much pause due to the cultural confusion at times.

[3] This should go without saying but here’s the footnote for the record!

[4] For those unaware I don’t actually have an uncle Jimmy.

[5] Quoted in Dementia: Living in the Memories of God – John Swinton, 117.

[6] Dementia: Living in the Memories of God – John Swinton, 118.

[7] Quoted in Dementia: Living in the Memories of God – John Swinton, 119.

[8] Quoted in Dementia: Living in the Memories of God – John Swinton, 133.

[9] Quoted in Dementia: Living in the Memories of God – John Swinton, 195-196.

[10] Quoted in Dementia: Living in the Memories of God – John Swinton, 2.

[11] Quoted in Dementia: Living in the Memories of God – John Swinton, 120.