My wife died about three years after diagnosis with frontal lobe dementia, a neurological disease similar to Alzheimer's. I cared for her at home for the first year, until that put me into the hospital for 11 days (my third hospitalization-first was my birth, second my tonsils). The day I went into the hospital, La Verna went into a nursing home, where she spent her last two years. For the next two years I visited her all but two days, although I'm not sure she was very aware of me the last year. She's been gone over four years now, but I still tear-up just about every day.