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Good morning. Current research calculates that a third of people born this year will develop dementia. Public conversation about dementia comes down to three words. The first is deficit. Dementia’s entirely negative. It’s a curse from a wicked fairy. There’s no magic wand to wave it away. The second word is decline. The arrow goes only one way. From bad to worse. There’s no recovery story, no website with herbal remedies, no neighbours with amazing parent-turnarounds. The third word is death. Dementia’s regarded as a living death. When death finally comes, people use the word ‘release.’ It’s not always clear whether release refers to the sufferer or to the family. Dementia so often takes away a person’s memory, relationship, recognition, and dignity, and diminishes their sense of self and self-care. So of course we cling on to names, memories, facts – anything to stop the inexorable drift towards oblivion. The first word of Greek I ever learned was LUO. It’s a regular verb that means ‘I loose.’ It’s particularly useful if you’re in the habit of releasing oxen. But if you read the New Testament in its original Greek, you find LUO pops up at all the key moments. It refers to reconciling the hostile, healing the sick, restoring the outcast, and forgiving sins. LUO’s originally about loosing livestock but ends up meaning all these things. In the face of deficit, decline, and death we want to keep as much of the person we love for as long as we can. We react as if they’re falling over the side of a boat – and hold on for dear life. But the lesson of the little word LUO is that maybe a better path lies in letting go, in letting loose, in allowing to roam free. If death is starting now, maybe resurrection can start now too. By letting go of what our loved one was we can begin to receive who they are now. Only in finding ways to enjoy who they are now can we reverse the deficit and the decline, because we stop insisting they’re moving away from something good, and start to realise they’re moving into something new. Dementia’s a terrible disease. It can be a time of extended agony and despair. But it can be something else. It might well be difficult, but it could become an invitation to see how we can remain the same person, and yet take on new and rather different characteristics. In that sense it’s training for a kind of resurrection – in which we’re changed, but still recognisably ourselves. God looses us; but continues to enjoy us and cherish us. The challenge for us of dementia is to find ways that we can do the same.