If there is anything that scares me it is dementia. My grandmother suffered from a mild case of this and it really affected me. I seriously hope to side-step this later in life, either by luck or by choice.
I was grieving for my "lost" father for a couple of years before he died. Fucking heartbreaking for me, but whoever he'd turned into seemed at peace and satisfied with life for almost all of that time.
>Fucking heartbreaking for me, but whoever he'd turned into seemed at peace and satisfied with life for almost all of that time.
I've witnessed the flip side of this: a grandparent with a hard life plagued by worry amplified by the confusion of Alzheimer's. Slowly wasting away for a few years. She did love her sons and grandkids playing piano up till the end, though.
All diseases are just variations on normalness. Nobody remembers 1000s of individual people but we don't feel sad that we can only remember 100. None of use are super intelligent but we cope with what we've got or even feel great about it. Most of us feel emotions more weakly as we age beyond our 20's but we don't feel sad.
By choice, if all else fails, definitely. My grandfather and my father made that choice when the going got too tough and pointless. I certainly intend to go the same route, should my brain or other parts of my body one day turn into unrecoverable disaster zones.
