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There are a lot of dire fates out there in the world, but as far as writers go I can’t imagine one much worse than Dementia and its close compatriot in cognitive corrosion, Alzheimer’s Disease. Terry Jones of Monty Python fame is currently suffering from Dementia to the point he’s lost the ability to speak or even communicate, and he was a driving creative force in that troupe, including being the director for several of the films. The Pythons have just recently made it official that due to Jones’ ongoing condition, Monty Python will be no more. Meanwhile, Good Omens has made its way onto our TV screens courtesy of Neil Gaiman and Amazon, but four years ago Alzheimer’s finally claimed its co-author Terry Pratchett after a long struggle that he knew he couldn’t win. He seriously considered the idea of assisted suicide, up to and including a documentary film on the subject he made in 2011. In a way he was ‘lucky” because the form of Alzheimer’s he had was one that didn’t go straight for his frontal lobes, but it’s still heartbreaking to hear him describe the signs of his degeneration.
“It was my typing and spelling that convinced me that the diagnosis was right. They had gone haywire. Other problems I put down to my looming 60th birthday. I thought no one else had noticed the fumbling with seat belts and the several attempts to get clothing on properly… I have written 47 novels in the past 25 years, but now I have to check even quite simple words – they just blank on me, at random. I would not dare to write this without the once despised checker, and you would have your work cut out to read it, believe me.”
I cannot tell you how much rage and frustration I would feel at losing something so seemingly insignificant as the inability to spell. I pride myself on it, to the point I am quite sure that the entirety of our Zombie Ranch Volume 1 trade paperback has absolutely no misspellings or misuses of language in it that are not intentional for vernacular purposes. And having to rely on a spell checker? The vary thought sends chills down my spine, for it would absolutely not pick up that the “vary” I just used, while legitimately a word, is not the correct word for this context.
But that’s only the beginning. The condition is still considered incurable, and you get to be the slow witness of your mind fuzzing over and your ability to connect words and ideas, and often eventually even your ability to express yourself in any intelligible form, much less in the play of metaphors, alliteration and myriad other cleverness that marked your career and gave you and others so much joy.
Or worse yet (to me, anyhow), they say Jones’ condition is such that his mental faculties are still intact but he has no real capability to show that, as if he’s a passenger in his own body that can see and hear what’s going on just fine but the ride’s on autopilot and he can’t override that. Like he’s living out a real life version of the “sunken place” pictured in Get Out.
I doubt that would be a fun situation for anyone, but for people like Pratchett and Jones who lived their lives with a razor sharp wit and were able to share that gift with so many… well, it’s no wonder to me Pratchett contemplated ending things prematurely before his condition got too far, even though his death in 2015 was reportedly of natural causes.
I wonder what I would have done in his position?
Here’s hoping I never have to find out.