You're exactly right. It's easy to sit back in a moment of reflection and imagine the circumstances that you would or would not want to live with and to make a living will based on those thoughts. It's a vastly different thing to look at death and say, if there's a chance, I want to take it. There are bunches of people in the health care profession and out of it who think that a person shouldn't change their mind. Our family compares it to the man who wants to commit suicide, reaches the edge of the precipice and decides to live. Then someone behind him says, "You made up your mind" and then gives him a push off of the edge. The merchants of death are in hospitals, nursing homes and all over the places where you would expect to find healing.
You have said it so well. When we are in good health, we look at the future and think, well, I wouldn't want to live like that, that's not living. But I have found from personal experience that when it comes right down to making the decision when we're IN the circumstances we hoped we'd never have to face, that somehow you summon the courage to give it another shot. It's only when there's truly no hope left that we begin to succumb. There is almost always some ray of hope left, as there was for your father. Most people are really born to fight for their life. He wanted more time with his family. He wanted to give it everything he had. If that meant being reliant on significant help, so be it. Life is a gift and a blessing. He recognized that. I'm very very sorry that your mother didn't see it through his newly informed eyes. She could only see it from her point of view. She will have to live with her actions. I hope she doesn't regret them, but if she does, I hope that your family can find peace and unity again.