The king is dead.

I remember Ralph Klein from my childhood.  With no cable TV then, CFCN was one of the three channels that we got.  Our TV was limited and in those days we never watched a lot anyways but mom always watched the news and I would often watch it with her.  Ralph Klein was a top-notch reporter who seemed to get the stories that no one, including CBC, the Calgary Herald or the Calgary Albertan (now the Calgary Sun), could dig up.   I always loved some of the stories he did, like when he paid for a homeless mans reservation at the Palliser that included a day of golf at a very prestigious private golf club.  The reaction from club members, all caught on film, when they saw a homeless man teeing off was priceless.  His intention was not to bring mockery to the plight of the homeless, rather it was to bring awareness to the plight of the homeless.   In all honesty, when he had to leave CFCN to run in the Calgary mayoral campaign, I fully expected him to be back on the news when he lost, but he didn't lose.

It's my opinion that Calgary would be what it is today had it not been for Ralph Klein.  Of course, his tireless effort to bid for the 1988 Olympics and win helped but it goes beyond that.  He expanded the LRT to the northeast of Calgary, forever changing the geography of the city.  He built a city hall that he felt was worthy of the city it represented and he made being a Calgarian something to be proud of, not something to hide.  At the Olympics he mistook the King of Norway as his driver.  When the King revealed to Klein who he was, he apologized and then bummed a cigarette.  He never hid his Albertan ways.

I always followed his political career closely, whether I was in BC or not.  When he jumped into provincial politics  I considered moving back to campaign for him.  At the time I was a die hard Liberal so it conflicted with my own party following and being the rep for the Young Liberals at SFU, I really couldn't do it.  Regardless, I was happy when he won and I will admit, that years later when I returned to Alberta, I did vote for him even though I was still a die hard Liberal.  I loved it in 2003, when Mad Cow disease was found in Albertan cattle Klein said, "I guess any self-respecting rancher would have shot, shovelled and shut up, but he didn't do that," referring to the farmer in northern Alberta whose animal was found to have the disease when it was taken to a slaughterhouse.  He was honest to a fault.

I saw Klein speak many times.  The last time was in 2006 in Lethbridge.  I noticed something then.  Ralph Klein was known for his sharp tongue and quick wit.  He shot from the hip and anytime prior to that day when I saw him live or on TV, whether making an appearance or a speech, he never used cue cards.  On this day, his speech was written on a piece of paper that he read from, not deviating his eyes once from the paper hidden on the podium.  Later, during a question and answer period he forget the questions that were asked to him only moments earlier.  At the time I thought, wow, he must be really hungover.  Only a week earlier to that appearance he had thrown a Liberal health policy book at a page in the provincial legislature.   He was mad is what I thought.   Months later when he made his famous statement about Belinda Stronach and her defection to the Liberals, "I don't think she ever did have a Conservative bone in her body.. well, except for one." (referring to Peter MacKay, her former boyfriend, who is a Conservative)  I laughed and laughed because it was funny.    A few years later it was revealed that he was suffering from Pick's disease and all those behaviours now made sense.  Dementia takes years eat away the brain and early symptoms are so subtle, that people rarely notice and no one ever thinks that it might be dementia.

Pick's disease affects the frontal lobe and temporal lobes of the brain.  Early symptoms include, behavioural changes and impaired regulation of social conduct (e.g. breaches of etiquette, tactlessness, dis-inhibition).  Hell, some would say that Klein was suffering from it for 20 years prior to the diagnosis, and that is very possible.  In later stages, people lose the ability to speak and read and write.  They will pace and pace compulsively and others with put anything that they see in front of them into their mouths, kleenex, keys or packets of sugar in a bowl.  It's very sad to watch and I have much sympathy for what his family and friends must have endured over the past few years.  It's a true blessing that he went quickly.  But what I can't imagine is Ralph Klein unable to speak or pacing aimlessly down the hallways of the extended care he was put into in 2011.  I can't picture him thin or with the lost look in his eyes that all the dementia patients get.  Yet, I hope that his family will eventually release some photos of him in his last years, not to see his gradual decline, but in hopes that it will bring home the fact that dementia is a terminal illness.

I see so many dementia patients everyday.  All of them had lives and minds.  They all had minds, some greater than others but everyone of them could talk and read and write and walk and eat and live, really live.  I believe that somewhere in their addled minds there still is a person with free will and I believe that many dementia patients WILL themselves to die because I doubt there is end stage dementia patient out there who wants to live without the abilities to exist as nothing more than a shell of the person they once were.  The king is dead and it's dementia that he died from.

To some, death is punishment and to others it's a gift.  Here are some names of known people who died from dementia and dementia related illnesses and for them, it was a gift.

Pierre Michelot                                                 Barry Goldwater
Rosa Parks                                                       Sparky Anderson
Colleen Howe (Gordie's wife)                           Ronald Reagan
Charles Bronson                                               Rita Hayworth
Norman Rockwell                                            Charlton Heston
E.B. White                                                       Norman Kaye
Otto Preminger                                                Jimmy Stewart

The list could go on and on and on.