Uncle
They said that when Richard died and they went to his apartment in Astoria, it was packed floor to ceiling, nearly wall to wall, with boxes of old things: notebooks from elementary school, out-dated medical records, broken plates, child-sized skis, rust-eaten menorahs. There was a narrow path between the stacked containers and filing cabinets, that snaked from the door to the kitchen, also packed, and off to the side to the bathroom, very nearly packed. The path cut between the towering stacks of slouching, overpacked boxes and loose objects, and threatened to disappear. Nearly everything in the apartment was from their childhood home in Long Island, now lost, where they'd lived and had money and a father. There was a small palate mattress in the center of the path, in the center of the apartment. That is where he slept, they guessed.