I hope my dad doesn't suffer a similar fate -- but if he does, it is his choice.
My parents are 88 and 78, and my mom has been hospitalized since last December (well, hospital/rehab/long-term cared), and it is very unlikely that she'll ever be discharged from the health-care system. Nonetheless, my dad stubbornly refuses to consider moving out of the big suburban house they've owned for 44 years, where I grew up.
My dad is an alcoholic, raging control freak, who at 88 is still a formidable presence -- my sister and I can never get up the guts to talk about anything of substance with him, because anytime anyone suggests that maybe it's a good idea to think about his living situation, he'll fly off the handle. He refuses to accept any solution other than his kids moving back in with him -- which is not going to happen (there's a reason we moved out in the first place, after all).
So we're at an impasse. Dad refuses to move, and I (and my wife) refuse to move back in. If he wants to stay there, that is his choice. I am powerless to change that.
So I'm basically running the clock out on him. I hate to put it that way, but it's the truth. If I find, some day, that he's fallen down the stairs and is lying there in a heap, that'll be unfortunate for both of us -- but that is a consequence of the choices he made. It is not a consequence of my "failing to do what I should have done to help," or any other such conventional-family manipulative non-program hogwash. (I might add that he's got a million bucks in his back pocket -- affording assisted living would not be a problem.)
I am not looking forward to the next... year or two or three or however long this goes on. But I am not going back into that dysfunctional environment.