This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The moment we all had been waiting for took place Saturday. My siblings and I drove our aged parents to an independent living center, kicked them out, and sped away high-fiving each other. We were finally free.

I first fantasized about putting my parents in "a home" when I was 13. For reasons that still cannot be explained, my GPA (0.09) became a topic of conversation during a parent-teacher conference.

My parents expressed loving concern over my scholastic indifference as soon as they got home. Mom was worried that I might be taking drugs. The Old Man wanted to crack my head open to see if I actually had a brain.

Mom: "Is something keeping you from trying harder, dear?"

The Old Man: "Trying? Hell, the average muskrat has a 2.0 GPA. I'm getting a hammer."

I was condemned to summer school. During that time, I entertained visions of the day when the tables would be turned and I'd put them in a horrible rest home where they would be farmed out as medical research subjects.

It was something I revisited whenever I felt aggrieved over some parental injustice. "Just you wait," I'd mutter to myself. "One of these days you'll be old and defenseless."

My idea then of the perfect retirement home for my parents was something resembling a dungeon, jail or even a dog kennel. Meals would consist of a choice between cat food and reprocessed former residents.

I would visit them, of course. Every other Christmas I would drop in and perhaps bring them something to dab on their rat bites.

As I aged, my view of putting my parents in a home softened. I gained a greater understanding of myself, which naturally led to the concession that they deserved better accommodations if for no other reason than they hadn't killed me before I was 18.

The moment of truth finally arrived. Mom's health is declining and the Old Man is a few synapses short of believing that he's back in Korea or Vietnam. It could no longer be postponed.

We found a place for them less than five miles from my house in Herriman. We took Mom and Dad for a tour of what we hoped would be their future home.

A nice woman named Sherrie showed us around. She was pleasant, attentive and didn't look anything at all like the maniacal gulag guard I had once hoped for. When I inquired whether the inmates were ever beaten or starved into submission, she gave me a pitying look and thereafter followed my wife's advice to ignore me.

I pushed my mother in a wheelchair during the tour. Was there a heated pool? Yeah, Mom. Do they have art classes? You bet, Mom. How was the food? Perfect. We need two bedrooms because your father snores. We know, Mom. You live in Holladay and we can still hear him.

The Old Man kept up his part of the conversation by saying, "Yes, dear," repeatedly, including that special moment when Mom fell in love with an apartment.

I looked around the place. There were no bare stone walls, no ceilings dripping sewage, no vermin, and no pleas for deliverance scratched into the floor by previous inhabitants. Not a single thing reminded me of the Château d'If of my former dreams. It was bright, warm, spacious and just what they needed.

Thoroughly pleased, Mom signed the papers to begin the transition process. Seeing him standing off by himself, I asked the Old Man what he thought.

In a moment of complete clarity, he said, "It's only five miles from your house. The shuttle will drive me there whenever I want. And they say I can keep my hammer."

— Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.