It’s always tragic to see someone decay mentally. And it’s very common. Alzheimer’s, for example, has no cure. It gets everyone, rich, poor, successful, unsuccessful. Bruce Willis having to retire due to increasingly worse aphasia is sad. You become a prisoner in your own body. Before Willis, it happened to none other than James Bond himself… the great Sir Sean Connery.
He was diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s but his family kept it quiet. He insisted on continuing life as he always had — playing golf, swimming, spending time with his grandchildren. But he became more and more frail. Pictures kept coming out. Sad pictures, of Connery looking dazed, and confused, a handler attending to him. Sometimes he would act oddly, out of character. Forget who he was, or who he was with. Get angry, sad, lash out for no reason. Accuse his loving wife of kidnapping him, his own children now strangers to him. I hate dementia with a passion for stealing beautiful people away from the world and imprisoning them in a body that’s barely theirs any longer.
And this is the saddest thing, for me. A fine man or woman lives a fine life… makes meaningful connections throughout it. Movies that mean the world, to people all over the world. And a disease cruelly robs you of your dignity in your last decade or so. All your highs and lows, the very core of your being… forgotten. You die, long before you die.
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