To be honest, Colin, I was indeed suicidal during that dark time. But I realized that to end it all before Mom was gone was merely passing the buck with ZERO guarantee that what was left to do would be done right. I had that much strength of duty to realize that if I ended it all, no one would know how to take care of the final arrangements, and at that time, funeral planning wasn't something you did ahead of time. (Times HAVE changed in that regard...)
Yes, you do have the same situation each day, or perhaps a slightly worse situation each day. Hard to tell sometimes, but long-term it was a slow decline. However, friends can be helpful sometimes. I agree, they won't take over for you. But sometimes if you have a good enough friend, you can get a sounding-board session.
Perhaps it was marginally close. I'll never really know, and I'm OK with not knowing just how close I was to ending it. But I had a strong enough sense of duty to family to not leave Mom's final wishes in someone else's hands. And once she died, the pressure was off because I didn't have to go see her in bed, non-responsive in fetal position, unaware of my presence or her surroundings. That was the gut-wrencher. I just felt a sense of relief that there was an end to her suffering and degradation.
It took me several months to come out of the funk - and it WAS a sheer black funk that I was in - but eventually I saw that life could go on, perhaps differently than before. At least there was an end to that ordeal. I found my dear Linda and suddenly life wasn't so bad any more. It happens. What is it they say? When one door closes, often another one opens. That is what happened with me.