Does anyone else struggle with seeing their loved one's decline?

My husband is 72 years old and he has declined immensely since December from vascular dementia. I am absolutely devastated every time I go up to see him at the veterans home and I have to leave him. Today when I saw him he had no clue who I was he thought he was my father that I was his daughter, and was actually talking to his Styrofoam water cup and hallucinating and seeing people in the room with us. It’s more than my heart can take. We’ve been married since we were 20 years oldAnd even though he looks like the same man I married he is a man that I no longer know. I am heartbroken sad and lonely and every time I see him my heart breaks all over again. Today he told me to stop calling him sweetheart because what would the staff think having his daughter call him sweetheart.Sometimes I just don’t know what to do next, and I spend most of my time crying by myself

Anyone that is watching a loved one decline struggles.
It is a very difficult thing to see decline, knowing that this person that you love will not get better, and that there is nothing you can do. You make the best of each day, and at the end of the day if you can go to bed knowing that you did the best that you could that is all anyone can ask.
Even if your loved one is not ill, just natural age progression, decline is difficult.
We are ALL terminal. It is just not something that you think about every day. If you did you would be in a constant state of depression. You live day to day, enjoy the moments you have.

So sorry that you are going thru this very tough period in life...just like many of us here.

My mom has mid stage dementia and is 86 yrs old and I'm often stunned how her old witty self is gone, how she is so incontinent and just fixates on snacks..my old mom would be mortified if she saw herself now. I cry in the bathoom often, vent here. It's still so painful when my cousins talk about "remember when your mom would xxxxxxx" My dad passed away 10 years ago --- I can't believe he's gone..just like that... though he did have cancer.

Old photos & videos are so hurtful...it seems that part of life just vanished.
Life can be so cruel.

Yes yes ..... I struggle with this as well. My mother is now 95 and is almost blind now from macular degeneration. She can't hear very well even with hearing aids and she is skin and bones even though she eats fairly well.

She has had some serious medical issues that have just torn me up to watch, but she recovered from them.

There is nothing easy about caring for someone who is declining. At some point, they won't recover from an issue and it will be the end. I do not want to have to watch that process. But I can't run away - I'm all she has.