January 25, 2026
"He props his smartphone against a pile of books and adjusts the settings so the screen won’t go dark. He sets a timer. Then he waits."
"Eyes closed, Samuel A. Simon traces his breath from his ankles up through his chest, checking in with each part of his 80-year-old body before he begins. A purple binder holding a play script rests in his hands; the opening lines come from memory. Midway through, he falters.
'I’m getting all over the place,' he mutters, flipping a page. He finds his spot, then continues.
Simon was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease in 2022. As his memory has grown less reliable, he has turned his experience with the disease into a one-man play, 'Dementia Man: An Existential Journey,' performing it publicly as a way to hold on to a sense of self.... Remembering one’s lines before a live audience is daunting — even without a disease that steadily erodes memory.
Simon has chosen to take on that challenge anyway. For nearly three years, he has performed 'Dementia Man' in small theaters and public libraries across the country...."
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8 comments:
Is dementia a kind of analgesic or anesthetic, a way of mentally detaching from the world before the Great Detachment at the end? Painful at first and painful to loved ones but sparing victims the pain of consciously confronting the end?
Nader created Biden's America. It seemed like a good idea to fight the corporations, but then the outlaw lawyers and public interest activists got money and power and became as entrenched as GM and GE (maybe even more entrenched, given how many big corporations have folded up over the years).
Progress.
"Painful at first and painful to loved ones but sparing victims the pain of consciously confronting the end?"
Depends on the type of dementia, I suppose. My father's left him angry and paranoid. I don't think his last year alive was comforting from his viewpoint.
Reminds me of Glen Campbell's final tour, with his daughter to help him when he lost the thread of the performance.
As far as I know, Alzheimer's can't really be diagnosed except after the fact with an autopsy. My father was "diagnosed" with it at 86. He lived another 12+ years, and while he definitely had memory decline, it bottomed out in his early 90s, and he was still reasonably aware and conversational (though hard of hearing, which was a bigger problem than his dementia) those last 6-7 years. He was also very even-tempered and content with his life. So I have my doubts that he really had Alzheimer's, or if he did, it was an unusually benign version of it.
I have a friend in her 70s who was diagnosed with it 5 or 6 years ago, and she also still seems quite sharp. I guess the point is, one should view these diagnoses with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Alzheimers is a process with a number of stages. My late wife was miserable during some of the middle stages, and oblivious during the later ones. I was miserable through all of them.
I've dealt with Alzheimers and senile dementia victims, all women as it happens, and can only echo tcrosse--they may be too gaga to know anything, but the caregivers suffer the whole time.
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