With our mom gone two years now, and our dad unable to live by himself, and knowing his savings will eventually run out, we had to make the very difficult and emotional decision earlier this year to clean out his house and put it on the market.

This has been a really hard decision mainly because we’re making it for him. This is a terrible position to be put in – trying to be true to our parents’ wishes, trying to figure out if there are any other options at all that would make more sense. Knowing this isn’t what they wanted.

Our parents never put any plans in place in the event they should become ill. They simply assumed they would live in their house until they died, and they assumed they would not die for a very long time. I admit I am angry at this. They chose, twenty-five years ago, to move two states away from any friends and family. I do not fault them for this. But I do fault them for not thinking things through more carefully. They said repeatedly through the years that they didn’t want to be a burden to us. But, in refusing to acknowledge they might eventually need help, and planning for it, they became an enormous burden to me, my sister, and our families.

In fairness to my parents, none of us ever really thinks we’re going to get sick or be unable to be on our own, yet it’s something that can happen to any of us at any time. My mom was only 76 and my dad 84 when we learned her cancer had metastasized to her brain. This was far too young … aside from the cancer for her and some mild COPD and Afib for my dad they had been healthy their entire lives. And yet.

Fast forward to April of 2023 … my mom had been gone almost a year, and at 86 my father started acting weird, as though he was having some early dementia issues. He was alone much of the time and with my mom not there to help him, he began to experience some cracks in the armor. It is simply fascinating how quickly someone who has always been relatively healthy can suddenly experience a cascade of health issues that make them very very sick very very fast. From April of 2023 to April of 2024 our dad was hospitalized for suspected pneumonia, experienced hospital delirium, suffered a fall resulting in a broken shoulder, had repeated UTI’s causing severe delirium and resulting eventually in the placement of a permanent suprapubic catheter, and had another fall resulting in a broken hip. Every broken bone occurred when I was out of the country on vacation.

For an entire year, we desperately tried to figure out what the heck was going on with him and what to do with him. He was in and out of skilled nursing facilities because that’s where hospitals like to send elderly people when they are well enough to leave despit the fact that many elderly people end up doing very poorly in skilled nursing. He was briefly in an assisted living apartment, and he has finally landed in a small group home with full-time care and five other residents, each with their own room. (Didn’t even know this was a thing when this all started).

So far, aside from bumps along the way, the group home has been going swimmingly. Almost too swimmingly in that he’s regained enough lucidity to think he could be driving his car again and to complain about being bored to the extent we worry he will eventually insist on leaving. But certainly, he could not be back in his home by himself and full-time or even part-time nursing care is financially unsustainable without selling the house. His current living situation costs $9000 a month.

We have been so unprepared every step of the way for all of this … which is part of the reason I created The Reluctant Advocate to begin with.

All of this is to say that making the decision on behalf of a living parent to sell their house … their HOUSE! … is hard. It’s nothing to be taken lightly.

Mind you, we talked to him about selling the house even before all of his recent drama. He had even toyed with the idea of assisted living but he often got so overwhelmed by the enormity of the task that he could never end up doing anything at all.

Thankfully, I’m power of attorney. And thankfully, my sister was willing to take on the bulk of the burden of sorting through all of their things, arranging an estate sale, and getting the house cleaned out. And now, the house is on the market and all that is left is to wait for an appropriate offer.

Would I have preferred to wait until he dies to sell it? Yes. I most certainly would. I would have very much liked to have more time to sort through my mother’s things, and to grieve. But it’s simply not possible. In many ways, selling the house will simplify things tremendously. When my father eventually passes, there will be no probate – any remaining assets from the sale will go to a personal account of which my sister and I are beneficiaries. It also eliminates the danger of something happening to the house while it sits empty. God forbid there were a fire, or a break-in, or someone hurt themselves on his property.

All of this has led to many conversations between me and my husband. The U.S. is not like other countries where we stay geographically close to our families so we can help our parents as they age. My husband and I don’t know where our kids will land and we have no desire to follow them around. We still have our own goals and preferences and plus, it’s not fair to them. We want to live in our own house, too, with our things, for as long as we can.

I think we just need to be realistic about our financial situation, and our health as it changes. We may need to decide what sort of situation we want to be in as we age – whether it’s eventually retrofitting our home to be more elderly friendly and having funds set aside to employ a caregiver, or choosing a transitional living community (independent living to assisted living to nursing home). Most important, we need to communicate clearly to our kids what we want, and put someone in charge of handling that if the girls aren’t comfortable or capable of doing it themselves.

Basically, our goal is to eliminate the same unnecessary angst and sadistic guessing game my parents have unwittingly subjected us to so our girls don’t spend their lives resenting us or wondering if they did the right thing.

I’m curious what other people have done in a similar situation, how they’ve felt about it, and how it has affected the choices they make for their own families.