Member-only story
The Demon, Dementia
A personal story and some research shared
The morning before that day, my mother had greeted her family with the usual, “Good morning. What would you like for breakfast?” But that day, what her family heard her say was something like, “Stand ocean. Per license Lily said jello? Or maybe it was more like “Pretty sofa. Half deer a pair in blanket?”
Or maybe it was like neither of those. I can’t remember. I’m just putting words together that don’t belong together, which is what my mother did from that morning on for the rest of her life.
My mother was an intelligent and educated woman, a college graduate during a time when women typically did not attend college and, after that but before she gave birth to me, a librarian at one of the most prestigious libraries in the country. She aced Reader’s Digest Word Power quizzes and won most of the Scrabble games she delighted in playing with her family. She prided herself on being correct, clear, concise, and compassionate. And then, suddenly, it was as though a millimeter-sized demon in her brain had left the college administration building where thoughts are formed and was stomping around with a micrometer-sized AR-15 destroying the pathways leading to the classrooms where words are spoken. Her words were just wrong.