After Lynn was diagnosed, when he knew what was going to happen to him... he would stand alone for hours just staring off. Often times he would come in with tear soaked face and say he wanted to die, he would plead and beg with me to help him end it. I couldn't.........

Back then, I thought I knew all about Alzheimer's. I had followed Reagan's story, I did tons of research. I had heard of the long good-bye, I thought I knew what we were to face...I knew nothing!

I have been thinking about this a lot of late. The first few years were not too bad. His short term memory was bad, it was annoying repeating the same things a hundred times a day, but he still knew who he was, who I was.. we still did many things together as man and wife, life was still good.

The last few years, have been a living hell. There just are not words to describe the torture it is to watch your spouse slip away from you inch by inch, day by day, year by year. One is always saying good-bye. At first to simple things, then as the years go by each good-bye is harder and more devastating. The long good-bye doesn't begin to cover the hell of this disease.

Knowing what I do now, would I have been able to forgive Lynn if he had ended his life? Would I have helped him end his future hell, by ending his life?

It is more complicated now because I know the hell left behind after a loved one takes their life. In my mind there is a huge difference between suicide because you just give up on life, and assisted suicide for those who are terminally ill.

Dad wasn't terminal. His suicide will never make sense to me. I will always be haunted by his death. I am not sure I will ever be able to completely forgive him. He chose to leave me, that is something I will never heal from. I understand that he was in pain, and now I realize that for him to be able to take his own life he was mentally ill. But, that does little to console my broken heart. And if I am truthful, part of me is mad at him because he didn’t seek treatment. I think it takes more courage to stay and fight than to simply give up.

Suicide will always be the wrong choice in my eyes. I certainly understand the want, and the need, to end the pain... I GET IT! But, when you kill yourself, you also kill a part of every person who loved you. I will never be whole again.

Assisted suicide for the terminally ill, is entirely different. IMHO

I have thought on this for a long long time and I know, I would not have been able to help Lynn end his life when he asked. Not then, because he still had good quality of life. But, now ... knowing what I do now, if there had been a way to foresee the torturous hell his life would become, I would have. If he was able to ask me now, I would help him. I love that man, I love who he was, I love him enough that I wish for his pain to end.

It is a sad world in which we live, one that treats their animals kinder than their loved ones. Tragic.