...all Bidementia.
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We all need to reflect on the repetitive thoughts and phrases we allow ourselves.
I’ve worked in rehab with post-stroke clients and, like everyone, I know elders who are fading. I noticed long ago that we will retain those thoughts and phrases and the stories we repeat and repeat and repeat.
People get to an age where only the strongest synapses are still firing. It’s then you get an insight into what they were thinking all those years, along with their most frequent locutions and favorite personal stories and jokes.
I don’t believe we all become different people just because not all our neurons are still firing. I think people lose the ability to mediate their thoughts and actions and sadly, when those filters fall, we’re exposed at very basic levels.
I've seen this with a loved one who had significant dementia toward the end. He was raised in a time and place where it was commonplace to refer to people with what would now be considered racial (or other) epithets. During his cogent adult life, he filtered those expressions and never swore in polite company. As his dementia progressed, his language became coarser and he began using offensive racial expressions, even though rarely in anger. They were just descriptors that he'd learned as a child and in his unfiltered dementia, they re-emerged. We worried that it would offend his private-duty nurse. I am amazed to this day that she recognized his better qualities and understood the source of his unfiltered remarks without holding it against him or anyone else in the family.
Biden showed these symptoms at the Lutheran Church in Kenosha.
He rambled on, back and forth, from current issues to events in his early career. It was hard to follow.
He had to sit down several times during the one hour event.
He spoke from notes, but couldn’t stay on message for more than a minute or two.
Then it was back to “When I was a young lawyer in Delaware” etc.etc.etc.
Like old Pop-pop at the dinner table.