On Saturday, my extended family had a cook out. One of the attendees was an older man (in his eighties) whom I’ve known my entire life. He’s always been a nice, friendly person. At least that’s what we thought until out of nowhere, he informed everyone that the whole world would be better off if a certain group of people were exterminated. We were all in shock, and his son made a quick exit with him, after lots of apologies. He had to have held these views the whole time, but has apparently lost his ability to know what’s appropriate to say in public.
Some people would want to give him a pass because of his age, but I just can’t see how I’d ever look at him in the same light again. Then again, it is better to know a person’s true feelings. I know everyone harbors racist beliefs, but wishing death on a whole group of people isn’t something that I can overlook.
This is in mpsims, because I have no idea what direction to go with it. Feel free to share thoughts and experiences or whatever.
Omega Glory, the cause for that may have been what you’re assuming - that he really does believe that vile stuff.
But, I think it’s more likely that he’s beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s and the personality changes associated with the disease/condition is beginning to take it’s toll on his cognative abilities. It is not unusual for a Alzheimer’s patient to start spewing filth that they’d never, ever given even private hints about to their family. A general growing anger at the world and their growing inability to comprehend things around them - combined with the poorer impulse control that the disease brings often leads to this kind of situation.
If that’s the case, it’s not that he’s spewing out things that he’s believed all along, rather he’s in the grips of an insidious disease that’s destroying his personality as well as his mind. I think that it’s the part of mercy to assume, in this case, that he really was the nice man you thought he was.
(I know my grandfather said some things about the Jews that I never took at face value after his Alzheimer’s got bad - when he let his daughter marry one, that seemed to me to be a more accurate measuring stick than anything he might have said while losing his mind.)
You raise a good point that I hadn’t considered. At present he doesn’t have a problem recognizing everyone, and lives on his own. It is possible though, since it was a random outburst barely connected to the topic being discussed. Thanks, OtakuLoki. That is something to think about.
FWIW, Alzheimer’s progressed with my grandfather, that he could still care for himself for a long time after his temper, especially, became particularly uncertain. Simply because someone is still able to live alone without being a threat to themselves doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not affected. And sometimes you can’t tell how well they’re surviving on their own, unless you take a look at their living spaces.
When my grandmother moved into an assisted living facility one of her friends was finally transferred to the actual nursing home associated with the facility, when one of the aides was asked why her laundry chute was clogged. When the aide expressed surprise that there was a laundry chute, the woman in question took her to the dishwasher, and showed how it was full of the woman’s dirty linens.
A friend of my mother’s, G, has been losing her mind more and more. She has no problems recognizing people, but her reasoning abilities have gone down the drain. You have to be very careful about what you tell her, because she’s likely to draw conclusions that she never would have drawn a year ago. She’s also starting to have problems recognizing places.
She lives with her 40sh-yo Downie son; last week, a friend died and one of her daughters was taking her, my Mom and another friend to the wake and funeral. When G’s daughter got to Mom’s to pick her up, G was there at the doorstep, waiting. “Mom? Uh, how come you’re here?” “Oh, you told me you were picking M here, right?” “Yes, but I was picking her, then you and R…” A quick phone call confirmed that R was at G’s house (as agreed) and had been wondering why nobody opened the door. G doesn’t have a cellphone, so if she’d left home a tad too late it would have been a real mess to find her. As the daughter told R and Mom (who’ve offered to help keep an eye on G) “the one who’s supposed to have cognitive problems is my brother, but lately it’s him who’s caring for her and wondering why Mom does weird things she’d never done before.”
She’s refusing to let her children (11) take turns at sleeping in her house or helping with meals. They expect to have to get forceful at some point, “either you let us help or you let us help, you can also let us help.”
Yes, I’m inclined to suggest possible Alzheimer’s too. Interesting that earlier respondents also think so.
Oh dear, not that Alzheimer’s is good news in any way at all, but, well, it just might be that the old boy cannot quite help what’s happening to his brain.
One of my mother’s friend’s mother was a German woman who was a lovely person. She was elderly, and by the time I went to university and moved away, Greta had to go into a nursing home. It was around that time that she began to make anti-Semitic remarks. I believe her daughter, my mother’s friend, was shocked and disturbed by Greta’s pronouncements. It had never been evident until Greta reached the age where she could no longer take care of herself. Senility? Alzheimer’s? I can’t recall if it was the latter, but it was distressing. I remember my mother not wanting to mention it to me, as I liked Greta very much, and was only told about after Greta had died.
I had very impaired mental facilities 3-4 years ago. As I got better in the last couple years, I was at the stage of remembering only parts of what is my life experience. Your brain doesn’t function right so the logic is impaired and you get frustrated angry. Any opinion you express is a product of the current memory you can access, and how your brain is working. Sometimes what I said was a complete break with how I have felt most my life or what I said yesterday. I would say the man is starting to lose himself, since he never was like that all the years you knew him. I kept notes as best as I could when sick, and it’s not me. Try to tolerate the guy, although obnoxious is still obnoxious, and if he’s to unbalanced, you may have to stay away from him.
I had something that caused many problems and got no diagnoses. In July 1999 I had problems standing or walking and the pain started. I had other led in problems before that for years. Years progress, and I spent two years swollen up and suppressing the immune system. My circulation was terrible. Only after getting the swelling under control have I been recovering my coordination, my strength, the ability to think and remember. I have only had feeling in my fingers for about a year and a half. I hit a new spot in my recovery about Mother’s day, and my brain can do some multitasking again. A few months ago I still couldn’t talk with somebody if a distraction like a tv was going. I’ve spent two years trying to catch up with the world, and relearn stuff, which until about two months ago was very difficult. I was to the point one time where communicating was something like this. Food Go Store Sad, but in the past. I have some type of time sense back. I have blocked most of what hell that was from my mind, and now am trying to think how I can ever get some type of functional life back. The recovery process did allow me to experience the problems of the aging mind in reverse. About the time my insurance wasn’t extendable, I was told I should get insurance so I could go on anti rejection drugs. I might have cut a few years off my recovery time had I used the anti rejection drugs. I’ll never know now.
I went through a similar situation many years ago when my father began acting inappropriately. Turned out he had several tumors. Ultimately inoperable and fatal. Not to be alarmist, but some precautionary bloodwork might be in order.
Prejudice instilled at a young age is difficult to break, and doesn’t just vanish from the brain even when the person works to overcome it. Many folks succeed in overriding it, because they know intellectually that what was instilled was wrong. But when cognitive/behavior functions are impaired or in a decline, that bad old programming can resurface.
That doesn’t mean these folks weren’t/aren’t good people.
True, if the statements stem from childhood prejudice, that’s one thing. At this point we’ll never know whether he was a life-long racist who hid it well, or if it’s a case of past programming just popping up again.
I don’t know when the last time he was checked out, so he might have some medical issues that haven’t been discovered yet.
My Mom actively worked for various aspects of the Civil Rights movement, never permitted any group to be denigrated in her presence, and was friends with people of all backgrounds. Her behavior was never forced and I really doubt that she was covering up any secret prejudices. Shortly before she was diagnosed with dementia, she began displaying odd hostility to random groups–and only once in a while. (If later reminded of a nasty comment she had made, she would be utterly nonplussed and wondering how our memories could have become so confused as to think she had ever said such a thing.)
Even if she had harbored ill feelings for 85 years, she certainly spent all of those 85 years working to make the world hostile to such hostility. I suspect that there is some sort of brain damage that changes thought patterns, rather than just revealing them, but even if she had been covering her true feelings, her actual actions put her life on the “good” side of the ledger.
My Brother was visiting an elderly family friend in Florida when the elderly gentleman just snapped. In the course of one weekend, the way I heard it, he went from self-sufficient 70-year-old who started to have a pleasant dinner at a fine restaurant on Friday night to someone who had completely lost their mind and had to be committed to an institution for their own safety Monday morning. It upset my brother so much that he’ll barely talk about it to this day.
(I only found out about it as I had to pick him up at the airport that Tuesday)
Strokes can produce a very similar thing. My Mother in Law, who never said a bad word about anyone, after she had a stroke said all manner of shocking racial things. Things she clearly didn’t believe, she also seemed surprised as what she’d said sometimes.
She used language not in common usage since she was a child 80 yrs ago. Even a tiny undiagnosed stroke can impair the inhibitor that keeps those things from coming out. She was not experiencing demetia per se, but it sometimes seemed things she’d once heard just popped out. I sometimes thought she wanted to get a reaction from people but didn’t quite know how some a racial remark would come out.
Try not to be too harsh on the old fellow a lot of things could have produced this reaction.
If the frontal lobe in particular is damaged, the “social filter” is gone, be it from Alzheimers, Pick’s disease or other dementias or stroke induced brain problems. Did he always hold these views… can be really hard to determine. Judging from behavior alone most of my patients (Alzheimers and related dementias) were complete social miscreants in their lives. The testimony of family… (always a good man, wouldn’t hurt a fly, clever and funny, generous, neat as a pin, good sportsman) shows me that I can never judge the person they were by the patient I meet. Often I will find myself saying to families " I wish I could have met your father the way he was 30 years ago."
Oh, thats where I work, btw. I work in a psych facility and exclusively with dementia patients who cannot live elsewhere.
Oh yes, even five does make a difference…but most of these people…daughters in their 60’s with parents in their 80’s and 90’s fixate on times before the parents retired, when he was still the best plumber in the city, or the Irish Cop with the biggest heart or whathaveyou. More with the men, because men are often defined by the job they do, but even with the women…I’ll never forget how Mom sewed my wedding dress and all the bridesmaids’ dresses, etc etc.
I agree with the five year thing though for purely personal reasons. I have lost a grandfather who at the end had frontal lobe dementia (Last day of his life was defending the house against the "God damned Yanks who never entered the war until 1941! " This was the only time my mother ever heard her father swear) Five years before we were reading biographies together.
My grandmother (other side of the family)has faded slower than that… five years ago she was confused, ten years ago she was slightly different…but 15 years ago she was in fine form going South every winter and trying to keep up with the Joneses.
