Steve Bunting

If he can be a good granddad to my son, then I'll open up a door for him one day, but not today.

So I shook his hand, kind of introduced him to my wife, let him kind of hang out with my son.

He's, you know, patting him on the knee and like, you know, bouncing him on his knee and just being okay.

I was real cold with him.

And then after that, I shook his hand when I got done with the party and I said, hey man, like I'm going on deployment, but if you can keep in touch, we can work on this when I get back.

So I said, okay.

He's like, all right.

Well, that's kind of interesting, right?

So I go on that first deployment and- How long had it been?

how old are you right here yeah i'm probably i'm 20 21 years old so almost almost 20 years yeah yep since i'd seen him had any communication with him outside of those phone calls i called i was mainly after he no showed me for my my brc graduation i was pretty i was angry at that point everything shifted from hope to just like screw this guy did you talk to him about all this yeah so

On this first deployment, right, we're going, we're doing a counter piracy mission off the Horn of Africa, just cutting squares there.

And there's us in the force recon platoon.

And I get a Red Cross message.

About four months in, I get a Red Cross message.

My platoon commander pulls me aside and he's like, hey man, hey doc, this isn't good.

You know, usually these things only happen if it's a suicide or a murder.

They won't tell us what happened, but your dad's dead.

And I remember just being so bummed, man, so bummed.

i was like i was just barely starting to work my way around to like reconnecting with him and opening up this door to of us being able to repair this relationship and now i'm flying back to the united states and because i was the oldest boy now i'm the person that has to you know sign for all his stuff i have to handle all his death stuff and um yeah somewhere along that way man he uh ended up committing suicide yeah i guess the gravity of everything kind of hit him um he had a falling out with my sister's mom um

have a half-sister with him, and he wasn't going to be able to see her, and he ended up committing suicide.