George Sr. has been in heart failure for a while. You can see that because his mouth is always open in that odd way, and his flared nostrils. My parents died from the same. It's possible that he was hanging on for Barbara. When you get that old, with a worn out sick body, anything can take you down.
His illness neutralized him for a while now and he has been powerless. If I was him, I'd want to go.
Just let him go.
Then open the flood gates of his "career" for all to see. << He earned that.