On Thanksgiving Day, nine years ago, I stole my father's car. He was 88 years old and living in a retirement community in Ojai. The previous July, he had failed his driver's test, but he'd kept driving without a license, as if he had forgotten that he didn't have a license, or as if he hadn't cared, but something had to be done. On Thanksgiving morning, I drove up to fetch him for a turkey dinner, and while he finished getting ready, I stole his spare car keys. So Dad spent the night at my house. The next day, after a long talk in which he still refused to relinquish his keys, I drove him home with a friend, who would drive my father's car back to my place. I was so nervous and eager for the whole thing to be over, so I got a speeding ticket on the way. My father never fully forgave the theft of his car, although as the months passed and his dementia  worsened. One reason my father had been so eager to keep driving was that his younger brother Wes lived in a county home. Wes had been born mentally challenged  and later suffered from schizophrenia , my father had driven monthly to see him. It seemed right to help them see each other. So, seven years ago, Jim and I borrowed a van  equipped for a wheelchair ,picked up Wes and took him for Thanksgiving with my father. At my father's place, we moved Wes in his chair out of the van and up to the door. When the brothers saw each other, their faces lit up. "Is that you, bud?" Wes called out, half rising from his seat. "Wes!"My father cried. They grasped each other's hands firmly, smiled at each other, their joy obvious. Slowly, we made our way back to my father's apartment; my husband walked alongside my father while I pushed Wes in his chair. That was last time my father saw his brother. Wes passed away a few months later. My father continued to worsen. That was our last Thanksgiving together. He died in 2011, a few months shy of his 96th birthday. That means there will be no car tricks this year, no wheelchair van and there will never again be multiple generations of our family at the same table. Father kept driving without a license because   _  .
He didn't care about it He had forgotten he didn't have a license He wanted to see his brother monthly He wanted to show he was still young