My father was about as big as a Bic lighter those last couple years of his life. It became impossible for him to drive a car, or grocery shop for himself, or even get around the house without help. Elderly people tend to diminish as they age, shrinking and shriveling until they're only inches tall, like my father was at the point when we finally decided to intervene. My three sisters and I had to have that uncomfortable conversation about what we were going to do with him. I loved him a lot less than they did, to be honest, but they were all married with kids, while I was still single and had a spare bedroom where we could store his stuff until he died. So the decision sort of made itself.

Another odd effect aging had on my dad was that he stopped talking like himself, so in some ways he was actually easier to deal with. I mean he literally sounded different because his voice got higher as he got smaller, which made him seem kind of silly and less threatening than I remembered from before. He'd always told dumb jokes to amuse himself when I was a kid, but I don't have any memories of him being what most people would consider a funny or nice guy. It really surprised me how much better we got along this time around.

I built a little bed for him in the drawer of my nightstand, and I would leave it open so he could call out to me if he needed anything. He fell asleep pretty early typically, but right before he did he would start to babble to himself, which was pleasant enough except that sometimes he would snap back awake and expect a response to whatever nonsense he'd just issued. Like one night he kept bringing up my mother, who had been his second of several wives.

"How tall is your mother these days?" he asked.

"She's her regular old height."

"She isn't shrinking?"

"I don't think so," I said. My mom was much younger than him to begin with, so she still got around perfectly fine.

"And how's her new husband?"

"He seems all right."

"Every day is hell for me," he said.

I didn't know what to tell him, so I just pretended to be asleep until he drifted into more of that incoherent babbling. Then I went to the living room and watched a movie to take my mind off things.

I guess my biggest regret is not being kinder to him. But I had a lot of bottled-up resentment from my childhood, even though the guy who did all that stuff to me was only vaguely connected to this tiny man who slept in my nightstand and took showers in the kitchen sink. It's hard for me to reconcile how I feel even now. I'm pretty sure I did my best, but I also failed him in many ways.
 
"Please take me outside," he said as I was heading out the door one morning.

"Not today," I said. "I'm late for work."

"Well, I could come with you."

"They said you're not allowed," I told him, which wasn't true at all. There probably weren't any rules about bringing your miniature parents to the office, but I would have been too embarrassed to ask.

"I haven't been outside in weeks," he said, looking sad-eyed toward the window.

"What about when you went to the park with Jill and the kids? She showed me a picture of you guys feeding ducks."

"That was back in September."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," he said. "I remember because it was my birthday."

I looked out the window to where the leaves had fully fallen off the big sycamore tree, spreading a solid blanket of grey over the green grass in my front yard. Even though it wasn't their fault, for a moment I felt mad at my sisters for not reminding me about my dad's birthday. I would have sworn it was in January.

I should be honest and tell this other part of the story too. We had been living together for about a month when I got the idea to close him up in an empty tin of Planters Peanuts to see what would happen. It hadn't been premeditated, nor did any incident in particular set me off that day. I was just acting out another one of those ugly impulses that kept bubbling up from somewhere deep down in my subconscious.

At first I sat there coldly, watching the tin rattle around on the table while he tried to claw his way out. Then he started screaming at the top of his lungs, but it sounded muffled and indistinct, like a mouse squeaking in the woodworks. I would have ignored him anyway, even if I'd heard him say he was suffocating or something.

But then it turned eerily quiet, and I felt compelled to pop the lid and peek inside. I found him huddled with his knees clutched tight against his tiny chest, rocking back and forth and staring straight ahead. Within a matter of minutes I had utterly shattered his little spirit, which hadn't satisfied me anywhere near as much as I'd imagined it would. It was clear that he couldn't understand the reason for my cruelty, just like I had never understood the reason for his. So I resolved not to be so violent or vengeful with him anymore.

I definitely didn't have a solid handle on our new relationship in the beginning, but we got to a good place together eventually. It took a major commitment from both of us. My father felt frustrated most of the time, and he had to learn how to communicate those feelings instead of just shutting down emotionally. He had to learn how to let himself be vulnerable with me.

The hardest part for me was controlling my natural urges to hurt him.

Benjamin Brandenburg has had work in Hobart, Literary Orphans and others. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

This story is a Finalist for the 2020 Mythic Picnic Prize in Fiction.

Detail of photo on main page courtesy of A. Davey.





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