Forget Me Not

Block's opinion on this subject was informed by a visit to Tilton, New Hampshire, to see his great-uncle Ralph, a former Navy fighter pilot who killed a comrade during a World War II-era training exercise because of circumstances unclear. Ralph was quickly cleared by the Navy and soon crashed again, killing two more men. Ralph now lives in the Alzheimer's unit of a veteran's home.

"While there is something poignantly, almost unbearably sad about an 84-year-old man begging for his parents, to think of Ralph as neurologically returned to his mental life as a 3-year-old is to realize the potential blessing of Alzheimer's disease," Block writes in the original version of "Uncle Ralph's Rapture." "Alzheimer's has accomplished for Ralph what many of us dream of in the slow, rippling wake of tragedy: it has bent the rules of time and space and returned him to innocence. Ralph has killed three men, failed in every serious career attempt, lost his family, and spent the majority of his life as a hermit, and yet if happiness and contentment are the point, then—at the present—it would be difficult for me to think of anyone succeeding more thoroughly than Ralph."

Block himself seems to harbor little worry about his own potential descent into the clutches of the disease. The idea of "retrogenesis"—essentially, returning to a childhood state—actually brings him an unlikely bit of comfort.

"My childhood was pretty happy, so..." he says with a laugh. "But I'm sure I'll feel differently when I'm 60 and I have a family; I'll be upset for them. But I don't fear it any more than I fear dying. I think Alzheimer's is both a blessing and a curse. Not that I want to develop the disease, but if I do, I believe there is a blessing to it."