As the son of a parent with cognitive decline, I know President Biden must step down | Opinion

My mother handed me a stack of mail when I arrived at her house.

“Can you please go through this for me?” she asked.

It had been months since I had driven from my Fresno County residence to my childhood home in Santa Barbara to visit Mom, then in her late 80s. She was still living independently and even driving, but her cognitive decline greeted me like a punch to my soul.

Mom’s mail — insurance forms, bank statements, and stock reports — overwhelmed her. She held onto all of it, the mundane piled on the important, for me to review because she no longer could.

Like an unwelcome intruder in Mom’s house, the warning lights on her dashboard of life during that visit several years ago jolted me to face reality: My mother needed help, and could no longer live on her own.

I share this in light of the difficult choices now facing President Biden and his family. Much has been made of the bad debate performance Biden had with former President Donald Trump. But as any child of an aging parent comes to realize, once the decline begins it is never about just one incident. It’s a daily, comprehensive decline that doesn’t get better.

President Biden is 81 and in decline. There is no shame in that — it is just his reality.

The shame is in not accepting what will not change.

Biden’s schedule

It has been reported that President Biden likes most of his active scheduling to occur between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. That certainly tracks with how my mother’s life with us proceeded.

Mom enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and then emerged from her bedroom by mid-morning dressed for the day. She would settle into her favorite chair for hours of reading. Lunch with her beloved soap operas would follow, then more reading before an afternoon nap.

My mother was unsteady on her feet, so she used a walker to get around. When the pandemic broke out, I began working from home in a bedroom we converted into an office. I could hear the walker pushing against the carpet whenever Mom came down the hall to ask a question.

One morning she told me how pleasant the backyard was that fall day. She even let on how she had walked around our pool.

“You walked around our pool?” I stammered, incredulous.

If my mother had taken one misstep and fallen into the water, she would have drowned, as she was too frail to save herself. I was working in my office and had no idea she had been alone in the backyard.

Another red warning light went off. It was time to move her into assisted living.

Family help

My mother was furious when I told her she had to go into a facility with 24-hour care. Her fury was equal to when we moved her out of her precious Santa Barbara home.

Over time, however, that anger dissipated. Today she tells me how happy she is with her living situation. This spring we celebrated her 95th birthday.

My experience is hardly unique among baby boomers who are dealing with similar issues involving their aging parents.

I find the debate excuses being offered by Biden administration officials to be shocking. They keep repeating that Biden’s performance was just one night, that he was tired, that he had a cold. New York Times political reporter Jess Bidgood says Biden campaign managers and White House officials are refusing to acknowledge what Americans have been witnessing for some time.

Voters see the TV coverage of Biden walking to Air Force One in his halting steps and stiff posture. When Biden can read a speech displayed on a teleprompter, he can be focused and powerful. But when he does not have the words in front of him, he can easily lose his train of thought. That reality will not serve the country well when he must act with urgency during a crisis. And how will he meet the demands of the office four years from now?

It has been reported that President Biden is a proud man. That can be a dangerous attribute when one gets old and starts losing abilities. Others are going to have to get him to accept the truth of his situation. It is time for Jill Biden and immediate family members to tell the president he should step down, for his own dignity and the good of the nation. It is time for a younger Democrat to take over the party’s nomination.

If they refuse, they will do a serious disservice to the president.

We all get old. Each person loses capacity differently and at various rates, but no one is immune from aging — not even a president.

But refusing to let go of the White House when it is time to go? That is political malpractice.

Tad Weber is the former opinion editor of The Fresno Bee.