I have gone through this twice, with my mom, and with my dad and his wife. I would recommend that you not wait to see what will happen. Your parents WILL continue to decline and you and your siblings need to come together on a plan. I found out, as many people in our position do, that I was the ONLY sibling willing to step into the breach and arrange the escalating levels of care they all would need. I'm hoping that your sibs are more trustworthy and willing than mine were, and I would approach them with this assumption. I would also be aware that you might not be this fortunate.

My mom retained her mental sharpness to the end (a month short of 90) my stepmom started a fairly quick decline from Alzheimer's at 75. I live 600 miles away, and by the time I stepped in to take over finances and organize their daily tasks my dad had neglected to pay some bills for at least 6 months. He had forgotten that they had made a trust and a will, I found that documentation snooping through file cabinets, had forgotten to pay her Medicare premiums (as a teacher she had no automatic Social Security payment). It literally took me months to get her Plan B reinstated so that she could see her doctor and I could schedule appointments.

This will be tricky and difficult to do without some hurt feelings, but a trusted family member needs to sort out their finances, their wills and/or trusts, and their financial plans. When my step mom went into decline my dad started drinking more heavily, kind of like your dad's three whiskeys, and I'm pretty sure this hastened his own decline.

In the end I had to find and place her in a care facility, arrange for payments, get control of his accounts, and finally after her death move him in with me. We made it for 5 years until I finally placed him in assisted living at age 97. He died a month short of 100.

I'm hoping that your family can come up with an agreed upon plan for the next difficult years. Now is the time to research how to talk to a person who is experiencing dementia, to line up potential care team members, to establish lines of communication and to divide responsibilities.

In my case I did all of this somewhat too late and got caught up in emergency response...trust me, it's a lot harder to make good decisions in a crunch, and much easier to have a good sense of your path before you have to choose one. Good luck and feel free to send me a comment if you have any questions, John