'The Talk' is never easy - Autoweek

The discussion with my father was, to be frank, painful. No, not that discussion--the birds-and-the-bees talk was a cakewalk compared with the one in which I asked him to stop driving. I had been thinking that we needed to talk for a while. He was in his late 80s, and his eyesight and hearing were declining, not to mention his reflexes. I had ridden with him in his pickup on a short drive from his house to the hardware store, and it had me terrified. It was as if he was on autopilot, not really noticing the world around him.

I worried for his safety and the safety of others. He lived in a rural area, and his ability to drive represented freedom and independence. After my mom died, he was eating most of his meals out of the house and that represented the bulk of his social activity, and he needed to be able to drive. Public transportation is nonexistent where he lived, and after a lengthy discussion, we came up with a compromise we could both live with: He wouldn't drive out of town, and he would not drive at night. When he wanted to visit our house, about 40 miles away, we would go and get him.

My dad was a member of what has become known as the Greatest Generation. He fought in Europe in World War II and was a self-made man. He was a strong man in every sense of the word. His son telling him that he shouldn't drive anymore was not something he thought he'd ever hear. It's not something I thought I'd ever have to say to him, either.

I tried using logic on him, repeating the words back to him--parents love that stuff--that he told me when I first got my driver's license. I remember him telling me that driving a car is one of the most serious things I'll ever do, just before handing over the keys to the olive-green 1968 Pontiac Catalina that had been the family car. He told me that when I was behind the wheel, I was responsible not only for my actions, but that I had to look out for the other guy.

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