seekingzen asks on the Bigotry blog:

“Oh good lord… what happened after all that?

The Soldier asked the same thing:

“So he calls you that and then what happened?”

“Oh, we made it through. I actually ate dinner there that night. I stayed overnight too, if you can believe that,” I said.

“No I can’t believe that.”

“Well that’s what happened. And that whole thing was small potatoes compared to the next day.”

“What happened the next day?”

“Vietnam Memorial.”

“You went to the memorial?”

“Yeah but it was more like I took them rather than I went myself. See, their older brother was in Vietnam and he was MIA. I mean, I imagine he was dead but they did not seem to imagine that.”

“No?”

“No, not really. They thought he might be alive. And I don’t know. Maybe, but I doubt it. So it had been many years and they had no closure. He was their big brother. They were quite a bit younger and they thought him a hero. And he was the mother’s favorite too. Her best son, she said. She told them this so you can imagine how that was.”

“Hmm.”

“And she would not or could not accept that her best son was killed, which pretty much forced the two brothers to go along and maintain this illusion because it’s what she wanted. She asked this of them so they did it. They accommodated her. They suspended reality I guess you could say and neither of them had ever gone to the Memorial even though it was right there in the city they visited at least three times a year. In fact, they avoided it like the plague.”

“So you took them?”

“I did. And to this day, in spite of there supposedly being no mistakes, I’m not sure I should have. I think it might have been an error and if so it was egregious.”

Have you ever done something consciously and deliberately after carefully considering it and had it go badly? What?

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