My dad is in his early 60's, very healthy and happily married to my mum. She does have some fairly major health issues of the requires fairly constant monitoring sort but she lives a pretty normal life and it doesn't stop her doing much. Dad retired two years ago from quite a stressful job. Mum has been retired for longer. They have lots of friends, socialise regularly and see my siblings and I and their grandchildren pretty frequently. They have no money worries and a comfortable standard of living.
My concern is that my dad seems to be becoming increasingly tense and anxious about very trivial things. He can't sit still (unless he has a glass of wine in his hand) and a minor thing like running out of dishwasher tablets or bin bags send him flapping out to the car to drive to the shop. He cannot wait, it has to be done there and then. He is finding it increasingly hard to cope with my normal-levels-of boisterous 3 DS (6 and under) and becomes quite difficult to be around if there is anything minor which bothers him as he can't settle until he has rectified it. His manner is becoming quite difficult to be around and his brusque, abrupt and actually quite rude manner is beginning to impact on my mum as she's being constantly corrected, patronised and to a certain extent belittled. This is very hard to watch.
He has always been a bit like this and was never the most relaxed or calm father when I was a kid but it is definitely becoming more pronounced. Is there anything I can do to help him? We used to live very close to my parents and saw them a lot but now we have moved away and see them less often but I'm sure it's more than just an issue of perception. His life isn't stressful or complicated but he seems to insist on making it so by overplaying even the tiny things. I'm really worried how he'll cope if something 'major' does happen and the effect on my mum of him falling apart. I'm sorry if this sounds very garbled, it's quite hard to set it down in writing as its all a cumulation of observations rather than anything specific.
If anyone is able to offer any advice about how we/my mum/a third party could help him reorder his thinking I would be very grateful. He does actually take medication for high blood pressure now I think about it and this sort of mind set cannot be helping him.