TOTALLY GEEKED!

Dear Prudence,
My father was murdered over 30 years ago when I was 6 years old. His murder was never solved or investigated, to my knowledge, although his death certificate lists his cause of death as a homicide. This was in Detroit during the ’80s, and I was always told it was a robbery gone wrong. Around my 16^th birthday my paternal grandmother, on her deathbed, told me that my uncle—my mother’s brother—murdered my father. Apparently, the event that led him to strike a blow to my father’s head was over money. I was shocked at this revelation but powerless to do anything about it, and her confession was a burden I didn’t want since I had mostly gotten over my father’s death after years of struggling with grief. My father, although he was a great man, had a heroin problem. The uncle who supposedly murdered him is a strung-out dope fiend who has had very little to do with our family except for popping up occasionally to beg for money or cause trouble. We’ve had run-ins, and he knows I know what he did, but he just rambles about my father’s drug problem. I’ve learned that my mother and her siblings have known about this. Last week my mother called and said her siblings were attempting to reconcile with this uncle and that she wanted nothing to do with it. She was thinking about going to the police about the murder allegations and asked if I wanted to get involved. This tore open an old wound, and I’m trying to figure out if I want to go down this rabbit hole. I’ve left Michigan and have a very good life. I’ve escaped the crime and poverty that I believe led to my father’s death. I want justice and revenge for my father. I feel as though I owe it to his side of my family, with whom I am very close. But I don’t know if it’s worth pursuing or what damage I may cause to my mom’s side of the family. I need an outsider to bring some perspective.

—I Don’t Know WTF to Do

Dear Don’t,
You understandably want justice for your father. But this is a 30-year-old cold case in a city with huge financial problems and trouble keeping up with current crime. The witnesses to your father’s death are probably either unreliable or dead, so even if your mother—with or without you—were to press forward, she likely would not find satisfaction in the criminal justice system. (And keep in mind that the family legend may not be true.) But there is another kind of justice you have already given your father, and that is the profound way you have redeemed his life. He was a loving man who struggled with an addiction and its destructive effects. Surely the thing that your father would have wanted most was for you to turn out as you have—a resilient and accomplished person.  When you think about him, please be comforted that every day you are living the dream he must have had for you. Right now you are feeling torn apart and thinking about what to do in a binary fashion. But you don’t have to make a final decision to either go to the police with your mother or turn away from the rabbit hole. Before your mother makes this decision, I suggest you and she have a meeting with a criminal defense attorney. This lawyer could give you a read on the possibility of even making a case based on your knowledge of this long ago event. This lawyer could also talk to you about what moving forward would entail both legally and emotionally. At the end of that session, you two would have a better idea about a plan of action—or inaction. Whatever she decides, your mother can also make clear to her siblings that she will not reconcile with her brother and that they need to respect this. And I hope you come to accept that not finding out exactly what happened to your father—and not being able to avenge him—is not only defensible, but maybe even the wise course. You will never forget him, but to honor him doesn’t require you to dwell on the manner of his death. Instead remember the wonderful things about him, and be comforted that you are carrying forward those qualities in your own life.

—Prudie