My mother had severe dementia. In the month or so before her death she was hospitalized. I was visiting her and she said that she needed to get back home because her mother would be worried about her. I told her that her mother had died 50 years earlier. She was shocked and exclaimed “No! That’s impossible! I would have remembered that!” A half hour or so later she again said that she needed to get home because her mother would be worried. I again reminded her that her mother was dead and got the same response. The third time she told me she needed to get home because her mother would be worried, I just told her that I had already talked to her mother and told her where my mother was. She accepted that calmly. I occasionally have doubts about whether it was right to blatantly lie to her like that, but overall I think it was the right thing to do.
Around that time a nurse told me that dementia is the worst thing that can happen to a person. I agree with that, not only because of what it does to the person themselves, because of the impact on the person’s family and friends.
I hadn’t heard that one. For a time he believed (as part of his obsession of all things Phil Spector) that “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes was the best tune ever (and held the secrets to the Universe) and had the chorus put on a tape loop, which he would play daily - dozens if not hundreds of times. Every day. His daughter mentioned hearing the opening drum part - “Boom boom boom whack!” over and over.
He’s definitely a cautionary tale on L.S.D. and musicians, apparently a large dose of “pure Owsley” pretty much scrambled his noggin. He certainly wasn’t alone on that score in the 1960s - Peter Green, John Lennon, Brian Jones, Syd Barrett, and a few others all took early retirement in one form or another.
I am not afraid of being dead, I am afraid of dying, and especially suffering from dementia. The first person I knew with dementia was a woman who had been a close friend of my grandparents, about their age. She used to babysit us girls,and would make pancakes for us in funny shapes. Poor lady finished her days curled up in the fetal position, totally unaware of anything.
Surely Common_Tater was saying Lennon’s creativity was diminished during the last decade of his life (Syd Barrett, after all, didn’t die right away post-Floyd, either. And Brian Jones “lost it,” musically, about a year before he died).
With Lennon, though, I think it was less the drugs than the sorta opposite: becoming (the second time around) a devoted and responsible parent. That, and not having Paul to bounce ideas off of (same problem Paul faced). Plus, Lennon DID have some okay songs later in life.
I think Sly Stone’s story might be the most parallel with Brian Wilson’s.
I just realized that maybe that was GrunthosTheFlatulent’s point: that – unlike Barrett, Jones, and Wilson – Lennon WAS producing original, reasonably good music when he died. If so, point taken. (Certainly, LSD mainly sparked Lennon’s creativity, in '66 and '67; it was heroin that laid him low for a couple years in the early-mid 70s.)
Welcome to the Dope. I see you’ve been here 9 months, but that counts as a newbie to this largely ossifed crowd.
I must compliment you on a truly wonderful moniker. That’s one of the more creative ones we’ve added in the last decade. Great icon too. I hope you stick around for a long time.