The Billfold – The Day Dad Gave Up

In February of 2004 I got a call from my Dad’s girlfriend asking me and my brothers to come up to Flippin, AR to pick him as he was sick. So me and my two brothers took the trip up there and sure enough, at 78 years of age and refusing to take chemo for a bladder tumor, it had finally progressed to where he needed to be in a hospital.

When we arrived where he was staying at his girlfriends house, I knew immediately we were at the end of a journey with his life. He was very weak, although we did get him to walk to the car…I think it was the last time he actually walked. I called ahead to the emergency room at the hospital where I worked and let them know I would be arriving with my Dad shortly. We ended getting him in a wheelchair and to the check-in desk where me and my 2 younger brothers took care of admitting him…and then I had to give them his insurance cards.

At one point the desk clerk asked for his insurance cards, and I know this may seem dramatic, but it was a defining moment in my Dad’s life and him giving up (at least that’s how I thought of it). I asked Dad for his billfold and when he gave it to me and my heart sank and broke. I knew he would never need his worn out, withered billfold ever again. You have to remember, for a man…a billfold is very personal and a “part of them”. I took the billfold from Dad and gave them the necessary cards for them to copy. When they were done with them, I put his billfold in my back pocket opposite the side of my own billfold and I forgot about till I got home that night. I put his billfold in a safe place because I knew he would never leave the hospital alive…and he passed away 3 days later.

I still have that old billfold of his…and it keeps me close to him. But when I think about the last time he handed it to me, it still gets me pretty emotional. Its amazing that something so trivial and small to some people, is so HUGE and personal to me. Regardless, it still gets to me.