Hospice nurse Chantelle knows I have grown weary and knows I tried to have the “hard conversation” with Mom and Dad about possibly needing “other living arrangements”: gentle code for moving permanently to an assisted living center or nursing home.  And she knows the conversation did not go well and that I gave up and have resigned myself to taking Dad’s lead on “accommodations.”  Still, Chantelle sees he is definitely getting weaker, and she thinks the day is not far off that he will lose the ability to walk as he does now (albeit only between his recliner and the bathroom), if one can even call that walking.  She has broached the harder conversations with him about what he will want to do as conditions continue to “change”—his condition—to deteriorate.  He simply does not want to talk about it.  She brought up the potential of a urinary catheter, about switching out his recliner for his reclining wheelchair, about just staying upstairs in his bed.  Questions that need to be asked and answered.  Possibilities that need to be considered.  He just repeats, “I will let you know when that day comes.”  When that day comes.  Sarah told me a year ago: That day came and went two years ago.  When that day comes.  I appreciated knowing Chantelle appreciated my situation and was trying to support me in at least having these important conversations, even if nothing changes.  I have not given up so much as I have altered course.  These hard conversations will be had fully and immediately when Dad cannot deny their essentiality, such as, when he falls out of bed or slips naked off the toilet.  When that day comes, the conversations will no longer be avoidable, awkward, offending, taboo.  The conversations will be had when his is lying immobile on the floor or tangled up with the toilet bowl.  The questions will be asked, and answered, somehow.