I hope so too.
My dad had dementia. Short term memory was gone. He didn’t live long enough to lose it all.
In some ways you and he were lucky. Though often at the start, the person is so unhappy, because they realize they are losing their minds. It is a little better in some ways when they are no longer upset about that as they don’t know they lost it. Mom thinks she is perfectly fine, with just about zero executive functioning or short term or much long term memory.