I think Hartman Rector came up recently here. He was was GA who set me apart as a missionary way back in the day, at the COB in Salt Lake before the new one was built. His wife has passed on:

http://www.heraldextra.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/constance-kirk-daniel-rector/article_da52b854-1038-5f37-966a-cb0fb169a785.html

My one fear in life is that I will linger on with Alzheimers, not that I have it, and dread getting any older than I am

as it goes against the norm in society.

Who were the GAs who died prior to their wives?

"Who were the GAs who died prior to their wives?"

Well, we can start with Joseph Smith, Jr.

I met Mrs. Rector a coupla times. Her husband was the mission president when I was a teenager. When I went through the old SL mission home, he spoke there. He performed the temple wedding of one of my sisters.

he was a good speaker, and very pleasant to talk with.

I don't guess he would look for condolences on RfM, but I'm sending them anyway.

He'll have a new wife by next year.

I knew her when I was growing up. A very nice person.

She seems to have been a lovely person. Lingering from Alzheimer's or dementia is horrific -- for the victim of that terrible disease and for loved ones. It's not just the total erasing of who a person was -- there is horrible anxiety requiring antipsychotic drugs, total incontinence, bed sores despite the very best care, inability to swallow, feeding tube, pneumonia. I would not wish it on my worst enemy let alone on someone who seems to have been kind, caring and full of life. Very sad. Also, having spoken at length with hospice nurses about this, the victim dies "peacefully in one's sleep" only if he or she is on a morphine drip or other powerful narcotics that have already put the victim to sleep and will hastened death -- something hospice care is generally unwilling to do for liability reasons. A death at home without a morphine drip is something I never want to see again, ever.

Having lived through this, I can only ask why a loving God would permit such unbearable suffering.