This is so inspiring! My hat is entirely off to you.

What I'm struggling with now is (I hope you don't mind me unloading) my son is in his forties living with his mom (my ex) now for years and years. She was his meal ticket and enabled his leaning into his disability in that I think she blamed herself (no foundation for that but hey) so he never had to lift a finger to find a way to earn money, and now she is in a health crisis and will likely leave this world sooner rather than later. If past is prologue she will do so leaving nothing for him (a grasshopper if there ever was one in the ant-grasshopper fable) so he is facing the prospect of finding a way to live on $900/month. Rebuffs my carefully worded suggestions that he try to find help out there, 250+ miles where they moved even farther away than they were, from hospital social workers etc.

On top of that he is not mine biologically, being the offspring of my ex and my best friend for whom she left me taking my then 4 year old son. Mr. Wonderful turned out to be monstrously abusive. When thank God she reached out to me (I knew nothing of the abuse then) I got her a plane ticket out of there putting 3000 miles between them.

As I visiting parent he's been part of my life for all but one of his 42 years.

Do I take him in? He's got a big-ass dog. Neither me nor my wife like dogs. Also a cat. We have 2 cats already. Also he smokes. Even if all that was corrected my marriage might well not be able to bear the strain.

We have been living the nice quiet life of an aging couple for years now. She seems open to helping him, despite his being an overgrown baby.

It is so overwhelming.