How to best tell dad that he's no longer able to take decisions alone?
Our dad is 84 years old. In general, he's in pretty good health considering his age. But we have come to the point where it is undeniable that his ability to discern what is the best course of action, the best choice for this or that it's just not good enough anymore. I could go over so many things to illustrate this, but I'm sure you know what I mean. My sister and I are concluding that we'll have to talk to him this weekend. The last straw was that my dad insists on buying a car and drive it (of course). Not only is he past the age of renewing his driver's licence, but he had one eye operated less than 2 months ago. He'll have the other one operated soon. One of his hands shakes to the point that he's no longer allowed to sign checks. As obvious as it should be that someone in his condition should not drive, still to him it is not obvious at all. That in itself already says a lot in my opinion.
Anyway, so at the moment I am trying to put together a text that could serve as a guide for what my sister and I need to say. I believe the hardest part is that I cannot count or depend on my dad's full understanding of our arguments. After all, if he was capable of fully understanding why he can no longer take decisions on his own for many things, let alone the important things (like giving away our heritage), then this talk would not be necessary on the first place. Then this means that this will need to be approached not as a negotiation, not as something that is up to him to accept. But rather as FYI, just-so-you-know type of thing. Of course, we'll explain the best we can the reason why we have decided this. But it's not up for discussion.
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading,
DPC
Anyway, so at the moment I am trying to put together a text that could serve as a guide for what my sister and I need to say. I believe the hardest part is that I cannot count or depend on my dad's full understanding of our arguments. After all, if he was capable of fully understanding why he can no longer take decisions on his own for many things, let alone the important things (like giving away our heritage), then this talk would not be necessary on the first place. Then this means that this will need to be approached not as a negotiation, not as something that is up to him to accept. But rather as FYI, just-so-you-know type of thing. Of course, we'll explain the best we can the reason why we have decided this. But it's not up for discussion.
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading,
DPC