Y-shaped scar

“I am calling from the L.A. coroner’s office to ask if you’re related to Allyn Franklin. He’s been here since January and we’re trying to find his next of kin. You’re our last attempt. He’s scheduled to be buried on Monday in Riverside.”

A heaviness flooded my chest. “This is the call,” I said to myself. For years, I wondered how I’d find out my dad died. Keys in hand, I sat. Sank. There would be decisions to be made.

The county morgue conjured stone-cold, gray images of men in blood-stained white coats, scalpels in hand, standing over blue-tinted cadavers. “Law & Order” stuff until the call moments before I rushed out the door to pick up my kids from school that Thursday in Westwood.

“I am his daughter, but we have been estranged for almost 20 years,” I heard myself say. Flushed, ashamed, I wondered what the caller must think of me.

In the Boyle Heights office of the caller, someone leaned close and asked with a loud whisper, “Did you find one?”

“Yes, shhhh.” I heard a cupped hand over the phone receiver. I glanced at my watch. I knew too much to know this wasn’t a prank call.

I pictured my dad at his best — jet black hair, azure eyes, proud in uniform or a suit from overseas. Then childhood memories together — playing guitar and singing “Cat’s in the Cradle” or “Me and Bobby McGee,” his pitch-perfect, deep voice rendition of the Joplin gritty chorus; body surfing alongside him yet tossed in a riptide, drowning; skateboarding luge-style down the dark multilevel parking lot of his Fox Hills condo.

I imagined him now within a plastic bag upon a shelved stainless steel tray. Refrigerated. Identified only with an orange paper tag attached by a twist tie, probably serenaded by the coroner’s radio playing rap music.

My parents married in June 1963, just before my dad left for the Vietnam War. From 1963 to 1967, he served in the Navy on a ship, the USS Newell, off the coast of Vietnam. Twice a year, he returned to our small home on the Honolulu naval base where my mom lived. I was born in 1966, their only child. I think everyone in our family felt alone, lonely. Between firefights and to lift spirits onboard ship, my dad created a radio program enjoyed by the crew. Black-and-white photos depict clean-cut, uniformed young men crowded around him at the microphone, seemingly trying to make the best of a bad situation, namely Operation Market Time.

Dad returned home a lieutenant haunted by demons. Mom, struggling with moods of her own and a baby, couldn’t manage him or their marriage. In 1967, we moved from Hawaii to Los Angeles. Soon they split. Dad spent time in and out of state-run psychiatric facilities, ingesting a variety of medications and enduring electrical shock treatment. There was no name for his suffering then. No groups, no effective treatment.

As a child, visitation with my dad was spotty. His struggles kept him in bed in his apartment. I waited for him atop the couch in my mom’s home, my braids unraveling as I searched the window for his blue Volkswagen squareback.

His rage and urge to fight most anyone drew police on multiple occasions. Our visits then became supervised and even less frequent. Nevertheless, I pined for him, his hugs, and his version of love. Over the years, occasionally the social workers didn’t show. Those visits were the most exciting and terrifying, sometimes racing horses full gallop, their ears back, me terrified I’d fall off as I watched him cruelly kick his mare’s belly.

At night, Dad couldn’t sleep, so we went to late-evening movies as soon as they were released: “Billy Jack”(1971); “The Exorcist” (1973); “Carrie” (1976).

Jean: I know I’ve never said it to you, but I think you know. I love you.

Billy Jack: I think you know, too.

Why the noir, the macabre? To externalize the devil or the unspeakable intensity of war? Maybe just to feel something. Upon my return to my mom, I’d have nightmares. Seems dads and some people don’t always love you the way you might want them to. I think he expressed it the only way he knew how.

I remember the last time I saw my dad. He was drenched at the side of a dirt road in Valencia. He had called late one rainy night saying his car had broken down and he needed to get home to Culver City. It was 1990, and I was newly married. From our condo on Willis in Sherman Oaks, my husband and I headed out to get him. My dad insisted he could just leave his car on the muddy road where we found him standing without an umbrella. Drunk and at least several days unshowered, he got in the back seat of our Honda. For the 40-minute drive, he leaned his wet body between ours in the front seat relaying half stories through stale breath, then asking questions only to interrupt himself to tell another tale. He left our car and our life.

In March 2009, as I held the receiver to my ear, I heard an exhale on the other end of the phone. The voice from the morgue continued. “Well, if you want to claim him, you’ll have to let us know. Otherwise the burial is Monday.”

“Why Riverside?” I asked, imagining being at his graveside.

“It’s a military burial for people who have served in the Army.”

“Navy,” I said to myself. “Vietnam.”

“OK, so let me understand. If I claim his body, I need to bury him. Otherwise, he is buried in a military ceremony Monday.”

Again, a muffled conversation and, I thought, a descending volume of music, “Muh, Muh, Muh, My Sharona …”

“Yes, these ceremonies are done about every three months or whenever we have enough unclaimed vets. Let us know if you want his driver’s license and dog tags. And we’ll send you the coroner’s report.”

I was stunned. Although I hadn’t seen him in years, I’d bet he had no other contacts. I asked for the night to think it over.

“OK, here’s our number. Ask for me tomorrow. I leave at 4 and you have to let me know by tomorrow.”

“Wait, one more thing. May I attend the military ceremony?” I asked.

“No, that would mean you are saying you are his family. This is for unclaimed vets.”

I calculated the time to pick up one of my sons. Dazed as I drove, I called my husband and asked him to pick up our other son. I explained that we might need to bury my father over the weekend. I knew he’d understand. Together we’d take care of it. The two of us, graveside. “Honor thy father and mother,” said a voice inside my head.

I thought perhaps I could claim my dad now in a way I never could in life. I knew him not to be safe — when I was a child, an adult, a mother. I had lived with guilt electing not to include him in my marriage and my children’s lives. Maybe now I could show him my love by claiming his finally calm, cold body — usually addled by alcoholism, bipolar disease and post-traumatic stress disorder. Now no longer flying into a violent rage, damning my mother or the Viet Cong; no longer tearful, in fetal position, depressed; no longer guzzling booze and perusing porn.

Or, I wondered, would it be more loving and respectful to allow my dad to remain “unclaimed” and receive a military burial, ceremony and all? I visualized the moment he died. He had to have been alone. What would he have wanted? What we all want? To know we’re loved, wanted, valued.

That Thursday night, as I lay in bed, I sobbed — at the loss of this dutiful young man broken at sea and of his promise as a new husband and father. I thought of all he could have been and his new scar, a Y-shaped autopsy incision over his heart. I had never before known such grief. Everything ached.

I went to services on Friday night, said Kaddish. At home, I lit a memorial candle. Friday had passed without a phone call to the morgue. I’d made a decision. Over the weekend, I moved as if in a seaboard fog and hoped my choice was the right one. On Monday, I stayed home and imagined the ceremony: the formality; taps; his casket being lowered; how proud I thought my dad would feel if he witnessed it all.

A week or so later, I received an official-looking manila envelope with a presidential seal. Inside was a letter from President Barack Obama, who could have used help spelling my dad’s name correctly yet expressed thanks for his service to our nation. If only he knew him. If only anyone did.

I phoned the cemetery in Riverside and confirmed that the misspelling would also appear on his gravestone. I arranged for it to be re-created and heard myself request the addition of the Star of David, recognized as the Jewish star, above his name. It seemed the least I could do, a small statement of faith that I honor his memory. 

Deborah Davidson is a writer, clinical psychologist and member of Wilshire Boulevard Temple.