so wats it like being a dead billionaire?

Back in the 1980s my dad give up most of his busi­ness ven­tures (hard­ware store, hy­dro­pon­ics man­u­fac­tur­er, pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty) and worked as an in-home aide for ter­mi­nal­ly-ill rich peo­ple.

Turns out rich peo­ple die some­times.

He had med­ical train­ing go­ing back to WWII, and these dy­ing won­ders who’d ‘fig­ured out the sys­tem and came out on top’ could af­ford to pay to have him take care of them. Even though, most of them balked at his rates.

Some of them were self-made – a chemist from Stan­dard Oil who had a mod­ernist man­sion, his off­spring kept him in the bed­room on the far, far side of the house – while oth­ers came from old mon­ey – this one guy loved his liquor and le menu frozen gourmet din­ners; he had a huge freez­er in­stalled so he could eat these things every sin­gle meal (I got a lot of plas­tic paint palettes out of that deal); he even­tu­al­ly fired my dad when a much ‘hot­ter’ nurse start­ed tak­ing care of him – and there was ‘I mar­ried a celebri­ty’ and “lung can­cer isn’t sup­posed to af­fect me” and a bunch of “you should see wat I did there, I sold all of that for a mil­lion a store!”

The first per­son he took care of was his land­lord for his busi­ness in San Fran­cis­co. Cir­ca mid 1970s.

She claimed all her in­her­it­ed mon­ey was gone due to bad in­vest­ments and no­body from the fam­i­ly cared about her – so he took care of her for free un­til she died. Turned out she was worth mil­lions; and her will stip­u­lat­ed all the mon­ey would go to her church. As he not­ed, NO ONE from her church ever vis­it­ed her when she was sick and (most im­por­tant) she still al­ways col­lect­ed the rent AND even had dad buy­ing her gro­ceries.

Her rather beau­ti­ful art nou­veau-styled ed­war­dian ‘man­sion apart­ment’ in San Fran­cis­co is now a dentist’s of­fice with a tacky sign on the door.

As a kid, there were con­stants I kept see­ing over and over. And I knew to look for them:

1.
All these peo­ple were valu­able be­cause of num­bers in their bank ac­counts. They could cite the num­bers. And if any mon­ey were spent, they’d freak out be­cause the num­bers would change.

2.
Late in life – ex­cept for the celebri­ty wife – these peo­ple had no friends. No one would vis­it and there was a slew of ei­ther no fam­i­lies or es­tranged.

The guy in the side room was giv­en 3 months to live. My dad took his job se­ri­ous­ly, and be­came this person’s best friend at the end of his life. The guy had a great life, start­ed as an en­gi­neer and did some in­cred­i­ble things. He was great to talk to.

My dad kept him alive an­oth­er two years. His fam­i­ly was fu­ri­ous. “We just lost a house cause we were count­ing on that mon­ey,” they screamed. Then they fired my dad. But even­tu­al­ly hired him back cause he was the only nurse that this guy liked to spend time with.

I helped dad take apart his guy’s hos­pi­tal bed af­ter he died. I won’t for­get the beam­ing smile on the new home­own­er (son or grand­son, not sure) as we left.

3.
You can­not take it with you. Tho some of these peo­ple were de­ter­mined. MOST could NOT FIG­URE OUT why they could not BUY THEIR WAY out of death.
 

So wat I saw was a lot of mis­ery, re­grets, shut out ‘pow­er­ful peo­ple’ sit­ting alone with (dare I say it) that look Cos­by has on his face these days (tho Cos­by is an ac­tor; these folks were not act­ing).

All this is a byprod­uct of a sys­tem where we’ve de­ter­mined a col­lectible item – mon­ey – is the end all, the most im­por­tant thing to have ever.

Since, I’ve seen this at­ti­tude in rich peo­ple I’ve worked for or tak­en meet­ings with. One of them bragged about his tro­phy wife. An­oth­er made me sure to kno I was worth­less, and that’s why he wasn’t ever go­ing to pay wat I was ask­ing.

Mon­ey buys pow­er. I sup­pose that’s a güd thing, we need it to sur­vive in the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. Col­lect­ing it is an awe­some hob­by.

It can buy al­most every­thing.
 
 

—steve mehal­lo

Re­lat­ed: Read The New Republic’s re­view of HBO’s Suc­ces­sion

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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