1972 LITTLE LONG LAKE ROAD

29 CHARLES ST

29 Charles St sits between Bagot and Rideau, which puts you a block from the Elm Cafe and Surfshack Yoga. The Cataraqui River is at the bottom of the street, pretty much, and the Broom Factory, and the Woollen Mill and the Boiler Room are all there too, just behind the trees. It’s my favourite part of the city, the most vital and electric-feeling. The most alive. The house is no slouch, either.

ASKING PRICE: $699,000.

SOLD -295 DAYS ROAD

A brick bungalow with detached garage, a workshop, finished basement with gas fireplace, a sunroom addition at the rear, extensive decking, and stupidly good views over farm fields. Sold in multiple offers in under a week.

THE PRICE? $479,000.

THE SALE PRICE? A GOOD BIT MORE THAN THAT.

DEMENTIA AND ETHICS

My dad has dementia, and moved at the end of 2024 onto the assisted living wing at a local retirement home, a place that he occasionally enjoys and mostly despises. Mostly I despise it too. The management is forever exaggerating the assistance they provide and cutting corners so madly it’s as if what they’re actually running is a garment factory. But his time is pretty limited and the idea of moving him again exhausts both of us.

I began in the fall to prepare his Amherstview house for sale. I’ve mentioned it in these pages. It’s been a stop-start process. Paranoia is common in those with dementia and about half the time my dad is on board with the plan (his doctor says he can never go home again), and the other half he spends complaining that I’m ripping him off and he needs to find himself someone else to help, someone “better”. I’ve come close to giving up more than once but, well, we’re related, and the POA we have in place demands that I act in his best interests (I’m good with that).

At some point, when he could still write an email, dad wrote to a local realtor asking for a second opinion (I was checking his gmail for bills I needed to pay). I didn’t think much of it. He received follow-ups from the agent, but by then dad had stopped writing to anyone, moved to the retirement home, and got a new phone number. Case closed, I thought. But this is where it gets interesting. And awful.

Before I tell you what happened next, I want to say that I’m not at all sure why exactly I’m even writing this piece. It’s complicated. To talk about dealing with a parent with dementia is definitely part of it, I think. And the challenges involved in trying to decide what is really in someone’s best interests. The responsibility we have to each other. I’ve decided, for instance, that selling the house so that my dad isn’t constantly thinking about it, and pining for it, and making frankly absurd plans to return home, set up a ladder, and clean out the eavestroughs (“those long pipes over the windows”), is better for him than holding on to the house for another year, when it might be worth more money.

There are myriad decisions like this to be made every day. Dealing with a parent whose health is failing (he desperately needs a new heart valve but his overall health makes that surgery too risky) and whose mind is clouding over, is illuminating and it is challenging and it is exhausting. I’m sure for some it leads to a deepening of affection, a greater understanding of the love that binds. I’m sure that there are families in which the experience is an obscurely rewarding one. In my case I am merely fulfilling an obligation, and trying to make whatever time is left for my father as enjoyable, and worry- and pain-free as possible. That’s all. And the worst is still ahead of us. Call me stupid, but I’m interested in exploring some of that.

I’m also here to talk about organized real estate (this is a real estate page, after all) and how important it is that those who lack the capacity for good decision-making are not abused by those out to make a buck.

When I was out at dad’s house recently I found a note from a real estate agent. I still have no idea how they made contact again. They were sorry they’d missed him, they said. “Call me!” they added cheerfully. I shot off a text, explaining the situation, and fully expecting that to be the end of the matter. “Sorry about the wasted trip,” I said. But here, in point form so I don’t get too excited, is what transpired over the next couple of days:

— the agent responded that they understood that I didn’t get along with my dad (!), and while that was none of their business, they were still “just looking for confirmation if he had a POA for sure, and if he had documents proving so”. Rather than backing off, they were trying to see if there was still an opportunity here. They wanted me to provide paperwork!

— I spoke to the office manager and the team in question was told not to contact my 91-year-old dementia-afflicted father again.  But a couple of days later they complained that my dad and his granddaughter were actually the ones making the phone calls. These calls, they claimed, weren’t solicited and they were ongoing.

— Within an hour, though, I had copies of texts the agent had sent to my niece, dad’s grand daughter. They were “still trying to figure out some things” the agent said, and “Mark claims he has dementia?” and finally this: “I did give him a number for a lawyer”.

Yes, you read that right: a real estate agent who claimed not to be contacting my dad, had in fact called him and provided contact information for a lawyer so that he could try to have my POA dissolved, leaving dad free to sign a listing agreement with this agent’s team leader.

I am still trying to process the absolute lack of integrity involved in those actions, the entirely absent ethical foundation.

This is where the shape of this bit goes sideways, of course. Turns it into something I should perhaps just file away in a dark, locked drawer. And I really might do that, if I was more disciplined, and not so angry.

Truth is, I’m livid, have been for days. I’m pacing in the low-ceilinged family room in that Amherstview house. There is a slightly underexposed picture of my mum on the wall in a high-necked burgundy sweater she knit for herself (It’s about as self-indulgent as she ever got).

There is another picture, this one in black and white, of my dad half a century ago in a ridiculous Greek fishing cap, thinking he looks marvellous.

On the mantel above the gas fireplace there is a little blue container with a couple of anti-psychotics still adrift at the bottom. The risperidone was supposed to quiet the persistent, upsetting visions my dad had for a while after my mum died, when he was convinced that several ghost people lived with him in that big old sidesplit and were resolutely ignoring him.

Finally, next to the pill bottle, is the yellow Post-it note the realtor wrote to my father: Call me!

He read it, his granddaughter told me later, and then turned around, startled: the agent was already knocking at the door, grinning. My dad thought it was one of the people who lived there. They must have forgotten their key. He let them in and showed them around, listened to their plan for him and his house. He didn’t have a clue what was happening.

SHELTER

Mostly he stayed away, because whenever he did return, his everything was stacked corner of a room no one used much. Utility bills, books so true they frightened him, ready for whatever shelves came next, shit guides to existentialism, silver bands his mother had left as warp and wow proof of a new physics. All evidence of his ever being there swept into a corner as abruptly as a one car pile-up, a not-even-regretful shrug. He preferred it outside (that grey sky, those so-far-off-you-couldn’t-see-them walls), but had lost the ability to arrange interior or exterior space, to organize best-before dates. Had lost most of what there once was, and wanted that pressed onto a T-shirt.

RECENTLY SOLD

MUSINGS