He worked hard, saved carefully, and made the best decisions he could — but always alone, in the quiet of the kitchen, with brochures he half-understood. When he passed, my mother inherited a folder of papers and a lot of questions.
Fifteen years and several hundred families later, that folder is still why I do this. My work is to be the person my father never had — patient, independent, present for the ordinary questions and the ones no one wants to ask.
I keep a small practice: fewer than sixty families at any time, most introduced by someone I already look after. It's slower this way. It's meant to be.