If your father wants to move into a home, for god’s sake let him

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

It’s time to talk about my father.

Although, to be fair, since he moved into our house about six months ago, I have spent more time than I really wanted to talking about my father.

My wife and I talk about my father a lot. Talking about him relieves the stress and countless irritations of his presence. Or, at least it did at the start of this. But, as time goes on, so much finding fault and letting it cast a miserable shadow over our lives is beginning to take its toll.

We get sucked into negativity. It’s easy to complain about things to each other and to share irritations but after a while it begins to sound like we’re moaning at each other. When everything is so negative, it quickly feels like talking about it is no longer about getting things off our chest but wallowing in the mire.

There is no plus side to this. After a particularly tiring and more than usually exasperating weekend, I proposed that instead of finding things to criticise about my father, we aimed to find one good thing — one positive thing — to say about him each day. That lasted for about an hour.

Well, actually, there has been an upside, of sorts. My wife and I are going out a lot more together. A lazy Sunday morning breakfast at home has turned into an…