05/03/2026
The R-Word, as I’m sure you have noticed, is back. At first it was just every now and then, clearly meant to shock and drive engagement. But now I see it online every day, used increasingly casually, its re-normalization nearly complete. I’m sure there are many societal and cultural reasons for this to be discussed and debated by wiser folks than me, but when I see that word used, all I hear are Miriam’s last words.
I supported Miriam through the last three years of her life. Miriam had a mild developmental disability and had lived on her own in an apartment her entire life up until when I met her. She had developed dementia, and could no longer care for herself, and so was compelled to move into the group home where I worked.
Miriam was a tough, vivacious woman, full of life and salty language. She was a fighter, a divorced mother of two who had battled poverty and abuse all her life. She loved to talk about her life and was full of stories, shocking and tragic and hilarious.
She was always telling stories, up until her last year, when her dementia began to truly take hold. One by one the stories ceased to be told. Her short-term, and then her long-term memories began to disappear. Often, she would believe she was a little girl again, believing me to be her abusive father. But soon even that false recognition was gone. One memory, however, stayed until the end.
“They called me retarded,” Miriam would say to me, to her housemates, to no one at all. “They called me retarded.” When she had forgotten nearly everything else about the life she had lived and the person she had been, forgotten all that had been said to her in love by her family and her friends and her daughters, she remembered what she had been called, and carried the scar it had left to her grave.
And that’s why I don’t use the R-Word.
Mike Bonikowsky
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ID: Image shows text that reads “They called me retarded.”
