In fact, I was surprised that he stayed with us this long, as he was lonely following the death of his wife, Martha - his partner in all things for 67 years - in 2010.
When two people have been so close for that long, the death of one is very often followed by the other within months or, at best, a year.
That George stayed for three more years is a tribute to hardiness borne of hard work and the self-sufficiency that best marked the way he lived.
He was 96 when he gave up repairing his own roof and storm-proofing his home for winter by hoisting a 30kg glass storm window up a ladder to the second storey of the house they lived in for 53 of those 67 years.
George was born on a farm in Glenville, Minnesota on September 3, 1910.
The arc of his life begins with kerosene lamps and horses and buggies and alights on computers he tried to learn.
His long life spans two world wars and a depression just as he came of age, in 1929.
Late in the 1930s he had married and won a dance contest with a prize of a live chicken that he promptly presented to his young bride, Martha.
They raised three children, rode motorcycles to their favourite fishing grounds and took their kids in the back of a truck on camping vacations to see the country and live in its natural bounty.
George became a professor of speech pathology and never stopped behaving like an academic.
He taught his children and his descendants how to live a beautiful life, a life of self-discipline, of awareness of the world and its wonders.
He had a generosity of spirit so that within his limited means he supported those causes that meant the most to him, the preservation of the environment, and the fostering of the cause of American Indians, whose culture of rapport with their environment he had always admired.
I admired and respected the way he lived his life.
Through 29 years, I was constantly impressed with his continuing curiosity about the world and his open-mindedness toward the people in it - this despite his evident disappointment at the failures of stewardship of the Earth he had seen in his life.
The sad part has to do not merely with his death but the way of it.
George had expressed his wish many times to die in his own home.
Unfortunately a sudden downturn in his health partly precipitated by his own failing to remain hydrated, landed him in an emergency room and from there to a nursing home where absence of activity brought about deterioration, a state only fostered by the practice of soothing any pain experienced by the elderly with opiates.
It's those opiates that gentle the way into that good night.
And George, whose natural bent was curmudgeonly, never got his chance to "rage against the dying of the light".
This essay is not simply to honour the memory of an admired father-in-law but to provide a cautionary tale.
A good death is rare.
One with dignity and respect for the wishes of the dying is possible but can only occur with a co-operative effort between the dying one and their strong persistent advocate willing to struggle against the presumptions of medical expertise at its most authoritarian, making the impossible claim, "We know what's good for you".
No. They don't.
