Purple Money

As I sit in my daddy's family room he snoozes in his chair. Wrapped in a blanket, tilted to the right angle, his pants half on with his left leg propped up just an inch or so. Everything where it should be. Somehow he got himself up and half dressed this morning. I am sleeping on the far end of the house so it's hard to hear him if he needs help. It seems that he needs a lot of help.
I have only been here for four days. I come from the west coast once a year like the swallows returning. My whole life it has been my obligation as it was between him and his father. He has never visited me. Not once in all of the dozens of houses that I have had. He has never called me. He never really asks anything about my life. I am just his little boy that is always welcome in his home. I think he thinks that is enough.
Even in this big house I can hear him yelling on the other end of the house. This morning it was about 6:30AM. That is 3:30AM Oregon time. I am very tired. It's been that way everyday. Usually, it is to go to the bathroom.
He can barely move his body around. He slides inch by inch towards the edge of the bed. It's very painful. He hollers when his balls get left behind. They are always trapped between his swollen torso and the bed. I told him he should get them removed since they don't work anymore. They have stretched to twice the length of his poor dead penis. He can barely get that over the lip of his urinal.
The first morning I was here I heard him yelling in the night. I ran naked to the other end of the house to find him on
the floor next to the bed. He had fallen trying to get to the porta potty next to the bed.
I wrapped my arms around him and tried to get him to sit up but he wouldn't budge. His body was like giant chunk of jello that resisted any way to hold it or move it. All he could say was “I'm so tired.” He refuse to help me.
I ran out to the garage and banged on the door of my half brother who lives above it. It took some banging to wake him up. He has the other end of Daddy's First Alert gadget but Daddy just leaves his end next to the bed. He doesn't have it on the floor, or halfway to the bathroom or anywhere else that he might need it.
Between the two of us we were able to get Daddy back in bed. At one point my brother was a little pissed off that Daddy wasn't helping us. Daddy of course got pissed off back. He has a very bad temper and just about anything will set him off. He usually just flings things up against the wall and yells a lot but it's always for minor things that really don't matter. He was my role model. I have the same disease.
That was the first morning. The second night it was the bathroom, twice. The next night his First Alert went off beeping like an air raid in the night. I ran the length of the house, naked through the night. I turned it off only to have it go off again ten minutes after getting back in bed . This time I figured out the were low. I thought I had it turned off but 10 minutes later I was back at it. This time Daddy managed to tell me it had a charger in the family room. I put the unit in the charger. It went off one more time 10 minutes later but somehow, it just stopped. I was able to sleep until the early morning bathroom run.
It has been a very strange visit this year. It is probably my last. My older brother came for two nights. My Daddy always wants to get his three sons together one more time. He has used that ploy many times in the past but we always fall for it
. We also had some distant relatives come to visit at this same time. They were so distant that at first, none of us knew who they were. It took a few days before we made the connection. I thought it very strange to have guests during the last time I probably would see my Daddy and my brothers.
Southern hospitality won out and we never questioned the arrangement . They were nice people and helped Daddy like we all did. Never mind that my wife was back at home doing background checks on them and finding all sort of suspicious things about them usually involving unsolved murders. She thought they were there to rip us off or worse.
At some point my Daddy, from his bed, says to my older brother and myself , “ I want to give you boys something.” He goes on to say that he is going to give everything to my younger half brother which is no surprise because he has been living with him and running his hardware store for twenty years or more. I figure he worked for it.
Never the less my older brother and I are intrigued. We both had our mouths open and waited for long moments for my Daddy to remember what he is talking about. He finally gets us to get him in his wheel chair and wheel him off to the living room where he has a huge wall safe stashed behind a bookcase. The strangers are invited too.
I'm thinking 'what are you doing?” but there was no stopping him. I've seen his show before. He likes to show his coins and his collections of knives and lighters and Presidential this and that. He thinks they are all very valuable but some are probably made of smoke and mirrors
. At first my brother doesn't want to open the safe but my Daddy was insisting and I just wanted to leave so I did. I went to the bathroom. When I returned the safe was open and he was showing the strangers stuff.
My older brother looked a little pissed so I didn't ask what he wanted to “give us.” I guess I missed the boat because Daddy hasn't mentioned it again.” He then takes the strangers into his bedroom where he shows her where his checkbook is and she asks “Is this where you write those really big checks?” It all seems so surreal at this point. Luckily, we did figure out the connection shortly there after so I stopped being quite so paranoid.
Later that night we are all on the porch and Daddy is bragging to these people how he went out into his garden and dug up all this moldy money and he bought this property with it. He talked about how the dust just went everywhere and the seller had his secretary take it in the other room to count it. The money was purple. I know because it was my money. I just never knew that that was what he did with it. I just keep wondering what he wanted to “give me.”