Many, many thanks for this link - the article really helped me to make sense of so many things because I could relate to the situations.
From the relatively trivial - like Dad's refusal to wear a hearing aid bought for him and Mum putting this down to his stubbornness & vanity - to the idea that it is my Mum who is actually losing her self, when the mirror Dad has held up is slowly taken away. The losing of both my parents in some ways.
It also reinforced some of the stuff I already knew, the learned social skills of a child surviving in many Alzheimer's patients long after their memories have gone so that they can't fool people they live with but can pull themselves together when there are guests in the house.
There's the way the writer understood when his mother spoke of his father's incapacity but he also recognised his father's portrayal of his mother as an alarmist nag. I didn't really want to believe all the things my Mum was telling me about Dad - I wanted to see both sides of the argument, as always. This is why it takes so long for 'outsiders' to acknowledge how bad things have become.
It describes the painful moments of lucidity when his Father says; "Better not to leave, than to have to come back". It is reminiscent of my Dad, in the nursing home, suddenly saying "Are we staying here now?". I find that my delight in his brush with reality is quickly replaced with the hope that he will soon fade back into the oblivion, saving himself the pain of realisation.
I found it interesting and helpful when the writer explains that he became a little less afraid in general and in the dreaded inevitable conclusion about how his father "wasn't much deader now than he'd been two hours or two weeks or two months ago."
I did like the non-sentimentalised style of the writing in the article which, as you say is probably not to everyone's taste.
Thank you again.