Alzheimers reduced my father to a lost shell of his former self, but I wouldn't trade any day I ever spent with him for anything. Regardless of the state he was in at the end, he was still my father and I loved every moment we had together. He was the gentlest, kindest, strongest and most thoughtful man I ever knew and that's exactly how I remember him. That's just my own opinion.
edit: Apologies, this is really personal stuff but I'm talking generically here -- please don't take any of the below as judgmental: I'm simply trying to work out my own feeling on the matter: I get you, but how would he have felt about that? I'm so, so uncomfortable with the idea of my kids having to look after me in such a condition that I hope they would understand that doing so is kind of selfish ... hmm I don't really have the words in English, but I guess the closest translation of selbstgerecht is 'self-righteous' but it doesn't really convey what I mean. At some point, the wishes of the remembered personality should be considered no?
That is a fair point. What I can say is that his loss weighs most heavily on my own children who never really got to know their grandfather. However, even though he was on a long, slow decline, he was still around for them to make memories with. Those moments are invaluable and I feel confident my father would happily go through it all again to know his grandkids were able to get to know him, if only a little bit. We still laugh about some of his shenanigans when his mind wasn't quite right.
