Free will! Dad will need to decide what his purpose in life will be. Grandma will need to decide where she wants to live. You love them and want to protect them, though they are adults capable of making their own decisions. It could be dad wants to take care of grandma at home. No one knows until everyone is asked what they want.
You’re right of course. Let me rephrase that. I mean simply that you have to be careful with kind, caring, loving people who have a tendency to self sacrifice for others. You have to remember to be just as kind, caring, and considerate of their needs because they will easily place others above themselves, even when it may not be necessary because that’s just who they are. Certainly it’s also a lesson for them to learn to calibrate that and to remember to also care for themselves, but until they have that down pat (and let’s face it, we’re all a work in progress on that front, given we are here in 3d and haven’t exactly finished our lessons just yet), it’s also my/our responsibility to not accidentally ask more of such a person than is reasonable.
So if we were to ask him if he would take care of grandma, he would say yes without hesitation. Should we ask that? Absolutely not, not without considering every other alternative possibility, and if we do ask this, then do everything in our power to make sure it is a group effort and no one is overburdened simply because the others in the dynamic aren’t pulling their weight as they should.
Grandma is also this way. She will always self sacrifice and do her best to avoid burdening others with her care. She would choose the nursing home over our home simply to spare her grandkids and her kids of any undue hardship of having to care for her. Certainly she doesn’t want to be in that place, but she will act like she loves it and prefers it out of sheer love for us. And I know this because I know her, her grandkids aren’t as easily fooled as she may think, but we also see what she’s doing and why.
So we will consider everyone’s free will, we just have to be very gentle, careful, considerate, and keep in mind the predisposition of my dad and grandma towards self sacrifice for the sake of their family, and make every effort to find a way that works for everyone and doesn’t put anyone out unfairly or unnecessarily.
You just have to know who you’re dealing with, truly know them, love them, and act accordingly with utmost care. Especially when it comes to such big projects and decisions.
And Joan you make very good points about grandma’s needs and routine and the general complexity of same. Sometimes in our desire to be helpful we act too fast, and it’s easy to mean well but bite off more than we can chew or not think about the little things too (not so little when they add up together to make big problems for grandma).
The difficulty is also because time is of the essence. We will call her facility tomorrow and speak with the lady in charge, that’s a great suggestion!