OCTOBER 3, 2023 – In early 2015 UB was hospitalized again; nothing life threatening, but another chink in his armor. Cliff kept me closely apprised, and notified me when UB was about to be discharged to a transitional facility at a local nursing home.
Cliff’s later call caught me off guard, however. He was in the midst of hell breaking loose.
“Hi, Cliff,” I answered.
“What’s happenin’?”
“What’s up?”
“Uh, we have a bit of a problem here . . . let me put you on speaker . . . Eric, I’m here with Uncle Bruce in the office of Rita, the director of the nursing home. Rita? This is Eric Nilsson on the line; Mr. Holman’s nephew from Minnesota.”
In the background I could hear UB arguing angrily with Rita.
“Hi Mr. Nelson. This is Rita . . . Mr. Holman, you’re going to have to calm down or I’m going to have to have you removed from my office . . .”
“Eric,” Cliff cut in, “Uncle Bruce does not want to be here, and he’s . . .”
UB’s voice was that of a disruptive teenager, and I could hear what sounded like furniture crashing around in the background. “. . . put that chair down, Mr. Holman,” I heard Rita say.
“Uncle Bruce is getting a little out of hand here,” said Cliff, his tone sounding like a commentator at an All-Star Wrestling match. “We were hoping you could calm him down a little.”
“. . . and you can’t keep me here!” I overheard UB say to Rita. “It’s false imprisonment, and I’ll sue you for this . . .”
“I’ve never seen him so out of control,” Cliff said to me. “I mean he’s in full riot mode.”
“Let me talk to him . . .”
“Bruce, it’s Eric on the phone,” said Cliff, trying to lower the tension. “He wants to talk to you.”
“That may be,” UB shouted back at Cliff, “but I don’t want to talk to him. I’m suing everyone for false imprisonment. You can’t keep me here against my will.”
“Mr. Holman, we can’t have you acting this way,” said Rita.
“No? Then let me go.”
In his commentator voice, Cliff described what was happening. “Security is now taking him away.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Away from Rita’s office.” I could hear a door close in the background. “Whew, okay,” Cliff continued without noise competition from UB’s rumpus, “now it’s just Rita and me and you.”
“Good grief,” I said. “Rita, I’m sorry you having to deal with my uncle. He doesn’t see things the way the rest of us do.”
“You’re right about that. He’s been impossible to deal with the moment he landed here, and I have to tell you, Mr. Nelson, with all due respect, I don’t think we can allow him to stay here. He obviously doesn’t want to be here, and you’re going to have to find an alternative for him. Cliff, I can give you some names and numbers of people to call, but I have to be honest with you, he’s going to have to be in a confined unit.”
“That’ll never happen,” said Cliff.
“Gentlemen,” said Rita, “I wish you luck.”
“Thank you, Rita,” I said in resignation to our plight. “Cliff, you want to call me later?”
“You got it.”
Within the hour, the Road Runner was getting out of a cab at 42 Baghdad Street. There was no way he was going to be “transitioned” in any place but his home. In our follow-up call, Cliff and I agreed: there was no way we were going to fight World War IV against UB over his choice of a “transition” venue.
Nevertheless, when I informed Tom Sullivan about the nursing home scene, I asked what effect evidence of UB’s latest stunt would have in a guardianship case. The frustrating reality remained unchanged: if UB could tell a judge what day of the week it was and who was the current president of the United States, we’d likely not obtain an order, and we would face the same threat we’d confronted all along: destructive retaliation. As I’d learned some time before from the Bergen County social worker, not even handing over $8 million to a scam artist in Nigeria (See 9/18/23 post)[1] would justify a court ordered guardianship or conservatorship.
At that point UB was a long way from $8 million. He’d given the Serbian scam artist only a paltry $1.1 million, though UB’s visits to the Western Union wire desk were continuing apace.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[1] The same social worker who’d visited 42 Baghdad and told me afterward that “things didn’t look that bad”—thanks to Cliff having arranged for an ill-timed clean-up.
