When Edie Herrold heard this week that Sandra Day O'Connor's husband found new love in his retirement home, memories of her own family's story came flooding out. Her father, Lloyd, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, also found love in a retirement home, while her mother was still going through the pain of coping with his dementia.

"It broke my heart when I heard (about Sandra Day O'Connor). I am so glad she had it in her heart to be happy for her husband," Herrold said.

Her frankness mirrors that of Scott O'Connor, who told Arizona television last week that his mother was delighted her husband found a new relationship with a fellow Alzheimer's patient. The Supreme Court Justice cited her husband's illness when she retired in 2005.

"Mom was thrilled that Dad was relaxed and happy and comfortable living here and wasn't complaining," Scott O'Connor said, adding his father was "like a teenager in love."

Aging experts say such new relationships among dementia patients can be unexpected, but are not unheard of. And while those relationships can bring comfort to some during an emotionally fragile time, they can also hurt loved ones who already feel alienated.

"It's very understandable," said psychologist Mary Pipher, whose best-selling book "Another Country" explored the feelings of people growing old. "If you forget about your wife unless she's in front of you, being in a new relationship is a good thing. If my husband was in such a situation, it wouldn't bother me, I wouldn't take is personally because he would not be accountable for his actions."

That the issue is making national headlines also points to a larger social phenomenon -- old age relationships are becoming big news as more than 70 million baby boomers arrive at retirement age. The subject was explored in this year's film "Away From Her," in which Julie Christie gives a powerhouse performance as an Alzheimer's patient who becomes fixated on a man in her nursing home, while barely recognizing her own husband.

Pipher said there was a chronic lack of information on elderly relationships, but that was likely to change as baby boomers approach old age.

"Baby boomers process everything. You're going to hear a lot more about old age when they get there and dementia is part of that," she said.

Laura L. Carstensen, a psychology professor and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, said new relationships among dementia patients can often be very hard on families.

"It can hurt the spouse a lot. Sandra Day O'Connor sounds like a lovely person, because for a lot of people, it can be heartbreaking," she said. However, Carstensen said that such relationships are often based on emotion only and are not as physical as younger love.

"The emotion center of brain tends to be relatively well preserved in dementia patients, even as their memory disappears. They can recognize kindness and the warmth of another person or when people are angry with them. The key to understanding these relationships is that that these patients are still people, they are still emotional and they still need love."

For the Herrold family, Lloyd's relationship with fellow dementia patient Mary Griffith was especially difficult, as Lloyd's wife, Edie Sr., was living in an assisted living section of the same retirement home in Milwaukee.

Edie Jr., a jazz musician based in Ann Arbor, Mich., remembers one visit when her father, a former president of the Milwaukee Art Museum board. He suddenly asked how she felt about him being with another woman.

"I saw him with Mary frequently, and they were so happy," she said. "How could I object?"

Mary and Lloyd drifted into a new world, their bond stronger than the family ties they found increasingly difficult to remember. The family's story formed part of "Almost Home," a PBS documentary about their retirement home, Saint John's On The Lake.

As with all old people starting relationships toward the end of their lives, Lloyd and Mary had to face the pain of separation. Mary died in January 2006, leaving care home staff to bring the bad news to Lloyd.

"He was sad for about three weeks before he got back to his former self, or at least what's left of it," Edie recalls.

Lloyd and Edie Sr. still meet every week at the retirement home, their marriage finding new space in old age.

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