U N L O A D E D

We pick up from where I we left off, the call to my uncle known as L.

While his best friend P had put a gun to my head 10 years ago it was L that talked to him afterward and made P realize that he had done a very stupid thing. P apologized profusely to me and I forgave him. I don't hate the man, I really didn't nor do I now. Yet, when it comes to my family, I don't have that power to forgive that easily. Probably because the sincerity I saw out of P dwarfed anything I saw from anyone that was considered family. I had only know P for 48 hours and my fathers side of the family for all but a few weeks but my gut told me to worry them. All of them except for L.

He called me on a Sunday evening and we spoke for hours. It was good to hear his voice, we had a lot of catching up to. But once all the pleasantries were set aside we finally got down to the issue at hand; the deceased.

The Dead Father

He lived and died by the system. Not the system that you and I play by but the system of government subsidized living due to his time in the military. You see, technically speaking, he was a Vietnam War veteran but between the lines......he was never really a war veteran. He played in the military band that would perform at the funerals of soldiers that were killed during the war. My father was an exceptional flute player and knew his way around other instruments as well, but he was not a grunt. He never saw a day of combat but would look into your eyes and say he was in there for the Tet Offensive and the fall of Saigon . They were very authentic sounding stories and by most accounts they were genuine, they just weren't his. He had culled together bits and pieces of war time horrors that he heard from other soldiers who did see combat and made them his own. From there he was able to convince the powers that be that in hearing these stories, it caused him great stress. That stress, the fear of going to war, gave him P.T.S.D. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and that entitled him to benefits.

Till his last days he lived off this. When money grew tight, he would volunteer for some experiment or research that a veteran's hospital would be doing. He even faked a heroine addiction and took methadone to get a little extra from the system. He lived at veteran's hospitals and even got his housing in Ozone Park, Queens taken care of via section 8 provisions. He avoided real work, tried to stay poor and reaped the social service benefits that followed.

To be fair, he wasn't playing with a full deck to begin with. He was an alcoholic, a big one, and he was reclusive and obsessive compulsive. It's because of this that I can give a little and not write him off as a total waste of a life. There was also his music, which I'll get to later.

Yes L and I retraced the trail of lies he had spun through the years and L shed light on some new topics as well. None of which were complimentary, all of which involved money. He had been stealing money from his mothers social security checks. The same mother A wanted me to visit. I told L of A's recommendation that I visit her. L asked, "what's the point?" She has no clue who I am since she has Alzheimer's and we only met once. I agreed.

I asked about the accidents that happened to my father, the fall in the subway and getting struck by a car. I asked what ever became of the settlement.

L: You know what? A told me about it and left me with no direction on how to find information. I found a lawyer but the lawyer doesn't know what became of it either.

Me: What?

L: If you want to work with me on finding it we can. But it's not going to be easy.

Me: What about the money from the fall in the subway? That was used to bury him, right?

L: Not all of it. I looked over some bank records that belonged to your father. There was lots of withdrawals, money missing here and there. I have no idea where it was going.

Me: Did he leave anything else behind?

L: A gave it all away or kept it. I told A that he could have at least set aside one of your fathers flutes.

Me: That would have been nice but I'm not interested. Why is A saying you're the one handling this when your not?

L: No one told me your father was dying until the very end, I moved out of New York to Florida. I had a rough time getting there, there was a snow storm. When I found him in his apartment, he with a nurse that took care of him. He was 60 pounds. He said that he would be fine and that they were just going to remove a tumor and he'd be OK. He also told me a few other things that he had hidden away.

What exactly were those things? Why wait so long to tell L that my father was dying? What was A up to? We had our suspicions and I will share them with you here.......

But not tonight.