June 15, 2021

Dear Daddy –

Jessica died nine days ago, just after 11 in the morning. Ethan was with her, holding her hand. Renee and I were there. Ethan’s best friends, Tim and Jill were there. Her death itself was peaceful to all appearances. I hope it was easy for her. The last words I spoke to her were, “Don’t be afraid, Jess. You’re going to a better place, and you don’t need to be afraid. You’re just going to get there ahead of us. And I hope you’ll be able to keep an eye on us from there.”

Is Jessica there with you? I don’t pretend to know anything about the afterlife, but I am convinced it exists. You taught me that energy is not destroyed, it merely changes its form. And our thoughts, our very identities, are energy. Just as it’s practically impossible to destroy electronic data, I believe it’s impossible to destroy our souls. Others may disagree, and, of course, if they’re right, none of us will ever know it. I hope Jessica’s where you are, watching over us, and waiting to be there to receive us when it’s our turn.

July 30, 2019

Dear Daddy—

I have spent the last 82 days writing and editing a single letter to you. By the time this sees print, it will have appeared, chopped up into six pieces. It was all about the history of your time as a victim of scams.

So, while I feel that I’ve spent the past six months—maybe even the past year—getting very little done, especially at your house, I guess it’s time to catch you up on a few things. To start with, Howard County has had two tornadoes—and more tornado warnings—since May.

The second one did not touch the Clarksville area at all, although my co-workers and I spent about half an hour sheltering in the basement of our office building in Marriottsville while it passed us.

It wasn’t long after that that I convinced the rest of the family that it was time to take you in for evaluation for dementia. You had left plenty of evidence lying around to support my case—empty express mail envelopes that probably had contained cash, withdrawal slips for large amounts of cash that had vanished, mysterious notes about conversations with people we didn’t know, laced with terms like “handling fee,” “tax payments,” and the names of various luxury cars, canceled checks to random strangers… In the span of five days, you had written checks totaling over $4,500 to people we did not know, and neither did you.

And, of course, after all of this, you filled out one of those damned sweepstakes forms that arrived by the dozens every day. You faithfully put your new phone number on it, even though we had told you never to do that. In fact, I hadn’t wanted to give you the number, but Mother insisted. She said you had to have it. I assume that was so, if ever you were out running “errands” and needed help, you could call us on your missing cell phone with the dead battery.

“Jeff Williams” was back soon enough. By July, 2013, he was telling you to deal with his attorney, Arlene Friske. He renewed his claim that he was actually an FBI agent, investigating money-laundering. He asked for the routing and account numbers for your checking account, which he needed for “the investigation.” I don’t know if you turned those over, but you did write a large check to Arlene Friske, which the police investigated. You may have believed that this was part of getting a cash prize. Or you may have believed you were paying a cash settlement in order to avoid legal action. In any event, you wrote it against your own credit union account, which didn’t contain nearly enough money to cover it.

I began to work with our local Office on Aging, trying to identify mental health services that might reach out to you. I had been told by a social worker that they had an elder mental health officer who might be able to evaluate you. But I knew age was only part of your mental state. You were also traumatized by the threats and harassment.

You still refused to have the phone number changed, even after all this; but after one of the shouting matches with the Jamacian, you asked Mother to please turn off the phone and leave it off.

This was a refreshing change from the night I came in and found you on the couch, in a lather, with about six cell phones in front of you. “Which one of these damn things works?” you demanded to know. I asked where they had come from. You said you had bought them. Most were un-activated pay-as-you-go phones. I wasn’t about to tell you how to activate them! “I have a working cell phone!” you insisted. It was true, you did. You kept it in your truck, the battery never charged, in case of emergencies. It was gone from your truck. We never found out what happened to it, but my reading had told me that the sudden concern over having a cell phone was because the Jamaican had convinced you that he needed a more private way to contact you, without your family knowing. Case histories said that these scammers often convinced their victims that the reason families were so alarmed by the scam activity was that wives and children wanted the money for themselves. So they gas-lighted the victim into setting up secret methods of contact. You reinforced this belief by growling, “None of your damned business!” when I asked why you suddenly needed a cell phone.

After the go-round with the phone number, things were quiet again for about six months. You stopped answering calls coming from 876 area codes. Mother and I thought things were done, now that you told them you wanted to be left alone. Without a willing participant, they can’t get money. We thought that, eventually, they would give up.

We thought wrong. One day in May, 2013, you answered one of the half-dozen calls you were getting daily; and it all resumed. Once they’d heard your voice again, they became like sharks tasting blood in the water. They swarmed. They called ten times a minute. You couldn’t resist answering. One of them told you he was a Federal agent investigating you for money laundering. You stopped sleeping, we couldn’t stop you from answering the phone, and you started sending them money again. You were still driving, at this point, and you would leave the house unannounced on your quests to purchase VHS tapes at Wal-Mart (the only place retro enough to still sell 10-packs of VHS tapes in 2013) and to send money to Jamaica via Western Union. You just wanted them to leave you alone, and you thought that one day they would have enough of your money that they’d grant you that wish. You didn’t know what I was reading in the papers, that people your age had paid as much as a half million dollars to these scammers, in that same hope of ending the harassment, and still achieved no peace.