Donald had to move in with his son Peter after his house burned. But he started to think he was burdening his child because they stayed out late every night. Therefore, the older man decided to move into a nursing home. But his son had the most beautiful surprise in store. “I’m telling you, Donald. Your son will lose his marbles soon and will ask you to move. It’s better to be proactive and find something else on your own before that happens, and your relationship suffers,” Donald heard Mary say once again. She’d been talking about that since they started drinking tea on his son’s porch.
Donald Harper’s house burned down two months ago while he was at the supermarket, and he suffered a heart attack when he got home. He was taken to the hospital, and his son, Peter, and his wife had insisted on moving him with them when he recovered. But they were a couple in their 30s with three young kids, and now they had to handle an older man in their home. Donald had been worried about being a burden for a while, but they insisted that they loved having him around, and the grandkids were always happy to hear his stories. But Peter’s neighbor, Mary, who was around Donald’s age, had been telling him otherwise.
“You think Peter and his wife are too polite to tell me to move?” Donald wondered, his right hand holding the teacup to his lips and sipping slowly. Mary did the same while nodding her head vehemently. “Of course! It happened to me, and I was only with my daughter for three weeks.
She blamed me for everything that went wrong. She said that I was too loud in the mornings and causing her electric bill to go up. My house was only getting fumigated, but I swear, I wanted to just return home,” she continued. “We haven’t talked to each other in a while because of that.” Donald hummed and nodded, thinking that Mary might be right. Obviously, his son was way more polite because they didn’t have one bad word to say about Donald at all. He also noticed that Peter and his wife, Sandra, were coming home later and later each day. He was happy to watch the kids for them, but maybe, he thought, they were unhappy to see him in their house. He decided it might be time to move.
The older man pulled his son aside that night when he got home and suggested moving him to a nursing home, but Peter said they should revisit that conversation later. “Dad now is not the time for that. We’ll talk about it later. ”Several months went by, and Donald was worried. Peter and his wife looked exhausted every time they got home, although they always smiled for him.
He had not talked about the nursing home subject again, but it was time to try once more. He had enough savings to pay for a decent assisted-living residence, so it would not be awful. He had even gone online to search for places, and there was one nearby in their neighborhood in Chesapeake, Virginia, which was only a few minutes away from Peter’s house. He had printed the information and was ready to show it to Peter.