Neither's charming, Jesse, but I'm going with 2. Depending on the relationship, the first one could be someone close wondering about the progression of the disease. No excuse for the second one.

Who the hell would ask #2? "Hey, how's your grieving process going? You reached acceptance yet?"

I will say, I understand why people ask #1, because EVERYONE asks it, but it's a really hard question to answer for most people, I would think. Like, my father has basically no reaction to anything, so how would we know? But what about the woman whose mother spends all day asking her, "Are you my daughter? Are you my sister? Are you my mother?" I mean, clearly she knows she's someone.

And #2, I can imagine myself asking a close friend, in the middle of a longer conversation. But yikes.

Yeah, I was assuming this was someone only slightly involved in the situation. Of course it's appropriate to talk about your grieving process with friends or family.

If not, it seems offensively intrusive to me. Not that the other one's much better.

Yikes, "Are you over being sad?" is not okay under any circumstances. If someone is close to you, that line of questioning would be okay if it were worded much differently.

Ugh. What Steph said. Who says things like that?

Oh, so here's the shocker: my mother is much more upset by #1! Maybe it was the context for the other one, but she's gotten it more than once!

OK, people who have had someone with dementia (and people who haven't, I guess): Which is the more offensive question? 1. Does he/she recognize you? or 2. Are you over being sad?

They're both terrible. I admit that I haven't actually gotten asked those questions, mostly.

But as you note, Jesse, it's often hard to tell if they know who you are. Or they know you're someone important, they're just not sure who. I think of it as becoming unmoored in time, so Dad could have thought I was his daughter, or his wife, or his sister, or his mother at any given time.

And you know, it didn't bother me that much. I mean, it's sad, but it wasn't his fault. It's not like he could have remembered who I was if he tried harder. My sister felt really bad about it, but I was okay with it mostly, since he reacted to me the same either way.

Yeah, I can see both sides of that. I never had that experience, so who knows what I would have thought.

I can see concern motivating the first question, even if it's a touchy subject. I don't know WTF thought process would lead to asking the second.