Pewter Cardigan

I've been thinking about knitting my Dad a sweater.
He's a button-up cardigan kind of guy.
He has this pewter gray number with brown buttons that he has worn for years. It has holes now, but it still gets worn when there is nothing else in the closet.
We live in Philadelphia and it might as well be Nova Scotia because Dad is always cold.
In 70 degree weather he is cold.
Dad grew up in Richmond, Virginia and he cranks up the household thermostat as if he came from the Deep South and not from just below the Mason-Dixon line.
Dad's surgery in January and subsequent chemotherapy and radiation treatments have caused his hypothalamus to go on strike-he is cold all the time, not just when my mother turns on the A/C to quell a menopausal hot flash.
Dad, unlike the rest of civilization, is wearing flannel in July which he pairs with his too-big sweatpants and the fuzzy slippers my Mom got him two or three Christmases ago. When we leave the house Dad totes a fleece jacket with him like a security blanket because there will probably be an arctic chill in the movie theater or restaurant or wherever.

So I've been thinking about knitting him a sweater. A cardigan, really, since that's what he likes. He has cancer and I don't know how to be a daughter to such a sick man. It seems that the only way to cope is to go full throttle into "nurse" mode. I'll knit something and it will be me taking care of him in a new way; in a way that doesn't make him feel childish, or mothered, or embarrassed. In a way that doesn't necessarily remind him that he has cancer. Maybe it will reaffirm his being, and remind him of the man he was when we used to sit on the stairs with a yellow legal pad when I was little and write "stories". I'll be the adoring daughter and he'll be Dad, the man in the gray cardigan.