Two years ago I would have said there can be truth without love, but no real love without truth. Now I've found an exception in a rather forceful way.
The exception is dementia. If you love someone with dementia and for me right now that's both my mother-in-law and my step-father, the truth of what they believe is often irrelevant and correcting them cruel. They will believe something else in ten minutes anyway. And yet the basic personality that I know and love is remarkably durable. And my mother still loves her husband, though he's asked her who she is a couple times now, and my father-in-law still loves his wife though occasionally she accuses him of neglecting her because he doesn't kill that French rapist in the backyard hankering for her 75 year old body. I still love all of them.
The exception is dementia. If you love someone with dementia and for me right now that's both my mother-in-law and my step-father, the truth of what they believe is often irrelevant and correcting them cruel. They will believe something else in ten minutes anyway. And yet the basic personality that I know and love is remarkably durable. And my mother still loves her husband, though he's asked her who she is a couple times now, and my father-in-law still loves his wife though occasionally she accuses him of neglecting her because he doesn't kill that French rapist in the backyard hankering for her 75 year old body. I still love all of them.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
