The Confabulation Candidate

 

As a medical student, I was confronted with patients who had a form of dementia which deceived the unsuspecting--you could ask a man what he ate for breakfast this morning, and he would confidently tell you, "Ham and eggs, two slices of toast with blueberry marmalade, orange juice and coffee, black, two sugars."

Meanwhile, his daughter, standing behind him with her arms crossed, was rolling her eyes, shaking her head and she would pull you aside and say, "He had oatmeal. Nothing else."

That was called, "confabulation." People who cannot recall, who have big lacunae (holes) in their memory and brain will often just run out a convincing sounding string of details which have nothing to do with real memory, or with reality at all.

There are a variety of ways dementia may reveal itself, but details, the inability to recall details, connects many of them.  Dementia may hide behind cliche` and common expressions, "Well, he's someone you can trust. He's a man of principle."

This morning, making our rounds in Hampton, N.H., my stalwart partner, Ms. McM, and I walked up a driveway looking for a Marie O'B, who was on our computer list as a Democrat who had voted in the last primary, and who we were trying to remind to vote in the election less than 3 weeks from now. There was a sign for a Democratic candidate on the  front lawn, so we thought we were at the right address, but in the window above the garage door was a large Trump sign.

Obadiah Youngblood

Standing over a lawn mower below the sign, in his driveway, a white bearded man wearing a beat up black leather cowboy hat and overalls looked up from abusing the starter cord of his machine, and watched us approach, fingering the starter cord as if he wished it was a trigger on a shotgun. He did not know who we were, or what we wanted. Ms. McM was wearing a KAMALA 2024 baseball hat. It was not clear if he noticed the hat, or if he would be able to read it, if he had.

"We're looking for Marie," Ms. McM told him. 

"Yeah, well, she's in the house," he said, eyeing us warily.

"I'm confused," I told the man, trying to sound friendly. "You've got a Democratic lawn sign, Mike Edgar for state legislature, but you've got a Trump sign, too."

"Oh, well, that's Mike," he said. "Mike and me go way back. His wife did my physical therapy, back in the day."

"So, we can't count on you to vote for any other Democrat?"

"Naw. I'm for Trump. All the rest is liars and lies."

"So, when Trump was President, did you like what he did?"

"Yeah."

"What, in particular, did you like?"
"Oh, well, just all of it. He was just so much better. No bullshit. Just did what he said he'd do. I didn't like the other guys, going way back, even before that. You know them. Just liars."

"But Trump did what you wanted?"

"Yeah."

"Which was what?"

"All of it."

We walked over to the front door, leaving the old man who knew his own mind, but who could not actually come up with any details,  to work on his lawnmower.

"Oh, that's my father," Marie told us. "An obstreperous bastard."

We asked her what the issues she cared most about might be. "Childcare," she said. "And getting Trump out."

Hampton Academy

She is a pretty woman, still in full bloom, dark hair, peachy skin and dark lashes, and she told us she had gone to Hampton schools, from pre school through high school, now a single mother with two kids below school age, and she had to live with her father because there is no affordable housing in town and she said she makes a solid six figure salary. But daycare alone makes owning a home unfeasible. Her parents do not want to do day care for little kids. She has a daughter and she is incensed Trump has made abortion illegal. "He's taken away freedom."

My partner said, "You ought to come to our Democratic Party Committee meetings, first Tuesday of every month, 6 PM. Lot of kindred spirits there for you."

"Oh, well, if you could make it kid friendly, I'd come. But no way I can do anything after work, except tend to the kids."

We walked off down her driveway. Her father was now limping along behind his lawnmower, carving wobbly lines in the lawn, still trying, no doubt, to remember exactly what it was President Trump had done for him.