Part of the problem was that my father was feeling left out. Mother was getting all the attention, and this bothered him, and made him argumentative. He has an elevated prostate level, and this led him to claim he was dying of cancer too. We assured him he would die with his condition, not of it.

One night after my wife and I had left, we achieved a breakthrough. Dad was talking about his grand piano. “I guess I don’t need to have a grand piano. I could always use my electronic keyboard. Hell, I could give it to the University and get a $15,000 tax receipt”.

Then he asked about my father-in-law’s assisted care facility. “Where is that? It’s not in downtown Toronto, is it? I can’t drive in Toronto”. I assured him it was out in the outer suburbs, with wide streets and little traffic. But I warned him he wouldn’t like living in suburbia, my parents never had. They had always lived in small towns.

The same national chain my father-in-law’s assisted care facility belonged to had a branch in an attractive small town near Hamilton, midway between my sister and me. It had a grand piano in the lobby that no one played, the director assured me. It was a quiet little town where seniors could drive safely.

My father is a very careful, very slow driver, but a very safe one. Driving is very important to him, and he goes out at least twice a day. My father-in-law also drives, and in these assisted care facilities, the man with a car is king. The ladies all want to be his friend, and the men all want favours. It occurred to me my father might have some fun in his declining years.

I called the facility and discussed availability and cost. My father would need somewhere to live in a few months, possibly before Christmas, would they have an apartment? The assistant manager urged me to pay a visit, and said the best way to guarantee my father an apartment was to pay a deposit and get him on the list.

I called my father again that night. They had availability. The prices fit within his budget, and would be supplemented by VA anyway. Once again, he said “Ontario? I hate Ontario! It’s too damn hot!”. I told him he could drive, it was a small town, they had a grand piano. He was unconvinced.

Several days later, brochures arrived from the facility. They contained all the usual bumpf, as well as detailed floor plans of their suites. Aha! There was nothing my father liked better than a diagram to scale. A floor plan was such a diagram. He could plan furniture arrangements and placements to his heart’s content. I called that night. “It’s going to be such a bother getting rid of all this stuff” he said. I said that’s what kids are for, then told him about the floor plans. He was immediately excited. “Send them to me, I’ll measure all the furniture and make some scale cut-outs, and arrange the layout”.