With the helpful and reassuring comments from all of you and my friends, family, caregiver, etc., that October is the month. Just wondering when and how is the best way to tell him that he will be going? As you all know, as soon as I tell him, I will be hearing aobut it every 30 seconds and both of our anxiety levels will sky rocket.
I haven't gotten there yet, but my memory of others say to wait until the last moment even if that means the day you take them. I definitely would not tell him earlier than the night before because as you said 'I will be hearing about it every 30 seconds'.
mothert, I'm going to bring a thread to the top for you called, "How do I prepare him for the nursing home?"
Also, go to the thread called "Caregiver Life with Spouse in Residence." (It's near the top of the main "Discussions" page.) Once you are on that thread, go to page 16. You will see that on May 19, 2014, I posted a question similar to yours and got several good answers.
People take various approaches, there is no one size fits all.
Depending on his cognition it might be best to not prepare him at all. You can say he has an appointment with a doctor and will have to stay a few nights. I know one person arranged it so when he took his wife to the doctor, the doctor said "you must move into an ALF immediately" and then the husband drove her to one; everything was prearranged and a room was set up ahead of time. In my case my wife was convinced that she had to move and participated in packing but she is in the minority.
I did not make an attempt to prepare him, as the decision was made after he lost awareness of home being home. I took him to the place for lunch, then told him I would see him in a little while. He only sometimes knew who I was at that point.