Dementia and a life of sacrifice

The following article by Kathleen McGuire was first published by a Catholic magazine in Texas through Aquinas Media. Ursula Marie-Crescence Bleasdell (affectionately called ‘Aunty Babsie’) passed away peacefully at her D’Abadie residence on Monday, July 22, 2013. Her funeral was held on Friday, July 26, at Santa Rosa RC Church, Arima.

Have you ever wondered what was happening inside a person with dementia? Especially when it was someone who was always outgoing, intelligent and loving—a person who spent her life focused on helping others?

When I remember my friend, ‘Babsie’ Bleasdell, with whom I spent almost a year in Trinidad, I couldn’t help thinking about that. She was an amazing example of how a person had risen out of very difficult problems at one time, and then had such an intense experience of God, that her whole life changed.

She encountered a priest in the early days of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and, through his ministry, gave God permission to use her in whatever way He chose. Eventually she became the spark that ignited the spread of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Trinidad and throughout the Caribbean islands.

God also turned her into a missionary, and she began travelling all over the world, giving presentations, and offering her healing ministry to any who asked, and many healings occurred.

She visited various parts of the United States, went to Africa, Australia, and other places, including even making a presentation before Pope John Paul II and an assembly of priests in Rome.

One day, during the year I spent with her and the Word of Life Charismatic Community in Trinidad, she told me about a dream she had. In the dream, she was alone in a little cell, in a cloistered Religious setting, totally giving herself to God.

Since her life was actually very busy, constantly attending to the needs of others, she commented that she would welcome that kind of experience. She was tired, but she believed God was the one guiding her daily life, so she continued what she was doing.

As time went on though, God had a different plan, and her physical and mental abilities began to fade.  Slowly and sadly, dementia began to overtake her, she was no longer able to do that work, and she had to depend on others to take care of her.

During this difficult time, she had some clear moments, and still trusted God, and entrusted herself to Him. In my last visit with her, when she was in the state of dementia, I couldn’t help remembering that dream she had shared with me, and of how her heart was yearning for a quiet contemplative place.

I had once heard of a man, blind from birth, who had a near-death experience in which his heart stopped beating, and there was no brain activity for some time.  When he came back to life, still blind, he began talking about the incredible colours and sights he had seen while he was brain dead.

How could that be? Supposedly, when the brain is dead, it can’t function, and how could a man who had never seen anything in his life be able to see and describe things he saw while in that state? If that could happen to him, couldn’t something unusual also have been happening in Babsie in her state of dementia?

Is it possible that as her faculties were beginning to decrease, God was granting her that place of inner stillness she had yearned for, but had denied herself to continue His work?

Or maybe He was asking if she would be willing to take on another kind of vocation, in which she would suffer that humiliating and debilitating illness as a form of intercession for all those people she had prayed for in her active life, who still needed healing?

Who knows what might have been going on in her soul and her spirit during that time when, on the outside, she seemed to have lost all her abilities.

God has a reason for everything He does or allows to happen.  Maybe after I die, He will let me meet her again and ask, “What was it really like inside you during your time of dementia?”