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The truth is, sometimes, in this fallen world, healing is tough. And sometimes, we never again become the people we once were. Anyone suffering through the depths of profound grief will know this. But, as with all shadows in this fallen world, we can learn from our losses and, with God’s grace, grow into someone better.

The last time I posted at Catholic Ecology was one year ago today. Since then, my mom’s Parkinson’s had advanced quickly and my care for her became a twenty-four-hour, everyday vocation, until her last breaths on the first day of Autumn.

I had kept my mom at home, with me, throughout the decade or so when that insidious disease first began to slow down an athletic, joyful, loving woman.

The toll of it all—her physical suffering and loss of independence, her dementia, her hallucinations, all exacerbated by a pandemic’s lockdown, and then her death—has been greater than I could have anticipated. Grief, and all the depression and exhaustion that comes with it, not to mention the post-traumatic numbness that comes after pouring oneself into the job of caring for a loved one, has taken its toll—even if colleagues and acquaintances may think otherwise.

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"The culture of relativism is the same disorder which drives one person to take advantage of another, to treat others as mere objects, imposing forced labour on them or enslaving them to pay their debts. The same kind of thinking leads to the sexual exploitation of children and abandonment of the elderly who no longer serve our interests." (Laudato Si’ 123)

Anyone who provides caregiving for a loved one with physical and/or cognitive failings—such as dementia, neurodegenerative diseases, and on the list goes—will encounter uncomfortably familiar territory in Dr. Charles C. Camosy’s latest book, Losing our Dignity: How Secularized Medicine is Undermining Fundamental Human Equality (New City Press).

As a caregiver of a ninety-three-year-old mother with late-stage Parkinson’s, I could write a review with the word count of Dr. Camosy's book. I know firsthand what it takes to advocate for a patient to sometimes overworked, sometimes uncaring medical professionals. I've had to use terms such as "basic human dignity" at doctor's appointments and have taken other steps to remind a physician or nurse or physical therapist that my mom still has life in her.

Dedicated to his parents “who raised [him] … to see the same...