My Story
Why I Built This Blog
Everyone comes to this topic for their own reason, curiosity, concern, planning ahead, or facing something personal. There’s no single path that brings someone here, and no single perspective that defines it.
For me, it started with family. Alzheimer’s and dementia have touched the people I love, and along the way I realized something surprising, there isn’t one clear, honest place where all end-of-life options are simply explained. Not from a medical agenda, not from a legal lens, just straightforward information people can understand.
I’m not a doctor or a professional. I’m someone who went looking for answers and kept finding gaps. This blog is my attempt to bring those answers together, to create a space where options are explored openly, and where others can read, question, and share their own thoughts along the way.
My grandfather was my first real encounter with Alzheimer’s, but at the time, it barely registered the way it does now. I was young, my wife was pregnant with our third child, and life was moving fast. The idea of death felt distant, reduced to something practical like a small life insurance policy, checked off and forgotten. Diseases like Alzheimer’s or Dementia seemed far removed, something that happened to other families, somewhere down the road. Fast forward to today, I’m 56, the kids are grown and mostly off the payroll, and life has a different pace and perspective. Death still doesn’t feel immediate, but it’s no longer abstract either. It’s something I think about more often, not with fear, but with curiosity and a growing sense that understanding our options matters more than we tend to admit.
More recently, it’s come much closer. My Uncle Brian, my grandfather’s oldest of three children, with my dad in the middle, passed away from Alzheimer’s. During the same time, my mother’s husband of 26 years was diagnosed with Dementia and now lives in a hospice unit. My uncle was in England, so I mostly heard secondhand stories of my aunt caring for him, meeting his every need as the disease progressed. It felt closer than before, but still at a distance. With my mom, it was different. I’d call her every week and hear, in real time, how Eric was declining, each update making it harder to keep the reality at arm’s length.
Eric was diagnosed with dementia in XXXXXXXX 20XX and entered hospice care in March 2025. In the early days, my calls with my mom included small things, like Eric not remembering how to use the TV remote. Then it became wandering out to get the morning paper and not finding his way back. Over time, it progressed to my mom taking complete control of his daily life, helping with everything. And you don’t really understand what “everything” means until someone walks you through it, walking with his walker, showering, getting dressed and undressed, eating, even going to the bathroom. It stopped being distant and became very real. My mother is a saint for caring for him as long as she did, refusing to place him in a home until she had exhausted every possible option.
For years, my mom and I have talked openly about our own preferences. Neither of us wants funerals, obituaries, or any kind of fuss. We’ve always agreed on donating our bodies and organs to science, followed by cremation, done as simply and inexpensively as possible. I’ve even joked that I have an old coffee can in the garage waiting for her, and she’s always been perfectly fine with that. The only real disagreement we’ve had is that I draw the line at having my ashes flushed down a toilet. Other than that, we see eye to eye on just about everything.
My grandfather died of Alzheimer’s. Then my uncle followed the same path. Now my mother’s husband is in hospice with dementia. At some point, it stops feeling like coincidence and starts feeling like something you need to face. I’m older now, and while death still isn’t immediate, it’s no longer something I can ignore. I’ve put a will in place, completed medical directives, and even organized all of my accounts and important documents so my wife and kids won’t have to guess or struggle when the time comes.
My dad was the first to say it out loud, that he never wanted to become a burden if he developed Alzheimer’s. He was clear that he didn’t want to live long enough to reach that point, especially after watching his father and brother go through it. I understand that completely. I watched my mother and my aunt devote years of their lives caring for their spouses, doing everything they could before finally having no choice but to place them in a home. My wife says she would do the same for me, and I truly believe she would, but that’s exactly what I don’t want. And I have to believe that the men my mom and Aunt they cared for never wanted that for them either. After seeing it up close and spending time researching these terrible diseases, and the limited end-of-life choices that come with them, this blog was born.