I feel safer with my father now that he cannot remember hurting me

Dear Delyara, My father was frightening when I was young. He hit us. He shouted. I left home at seventeen and spent years keeping distance. Now he has dementia. He is gentle. He reaches for my hand. He calls me “my wee girl” and apologizes if he spills tea. I visit twice a week. Sometimes I enjoy being with him. Then guilt and anger arrive together. Am I forgiving someone who never properly apologized simply because disease removed the dangerous parts? Is this even him? Last week, he told a nurse I was his favorite person. I went into the corridor and cried. There was a time I would have given anything to hear that. Now it comes from a father who cannot remember the nights I hid from him. People say dementia gives families strange second chances. I do not know whether this is a second chance or a completely different relationship with a man whose brain has erased the evidence before I decided what forgiveness meant.