“So we made it through dinner with the bigot and I was unscathed, short term. Longer term? Well things occurred. But we did eat dinner, and we even spent the night there. I guess it’s odd but I just didn’t care at the time. I had my mind on the next day.”

“What was the next day?”

“Vietnam Memorial. See, we were traveling together but with different priorities. My finance was introducing me to his family, his brother was tagging along because we had fun and I was taking these brothers to the memorial, or else.”

“Or else?’

“Yeah. I really thought it was what I was supposed to do. See, my boyfriend and I had a lot of late nights about this. And up-in-the-middle-of-the-nights about this. He had dreams… nightmares, I mean. His brother was a helicopter pilot who got shot down. So he would have these dreams and they were awful. They were also relentless. I don’t know what else to say. His brother had been MIA for years and I don’t know that it was always so hard or bad from him but from the time I got on the scene I saw him do nothing but suffer. He was so distressed and we talked about this all the time. We talked extensively so I figured he wanted me to help him with it somehow.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. Someone tells you they never talk about something but now they’re talking. And this just kept gaining steam. It kept coming up and it just seemed obvious to me I should do something. And for the brother as well. Not the dead one, the live one. I figured the brother who was MIA was dead.”

“Yeah, he’s dead. What did they think might have happened otherwise?”

“They thought he might be dead, but he may also have fallen in love with some beautiful Vietnamese girl and he was with her and living happily.”

He sighed.

“I know. But what are you going to do? Confront this? It’s not my brother who is MIA. I don’t know what that’s like. I just listened. But anyway my boyfriend’s brother was in bad shape over this as well. Even worse, because he had no one to talk to. He had no woman!”

“That’s hard when you’ve got no one to talk to.”

“Yeah. And the brothers were close. They almost acted as twins. My boyfriend told his brother pretty much everything so the brother knew this was going on. He knew we were talking and he wanted to talk too. He envied this according to my boyfriend, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t talk to the brother like I could my boyfriend. We didn’t have that kind of intimacy. We didn’t sleep together! So there was little I could do for him except vicariously but he did get some benefit that way and I was glad. Because I can’t tell you how much I liked this guy. He was just a really good man, the likes of which you rarely see. And a good brother. He was incredibly supportive of us. Of me and of his brother and of the two of us together.”

“That’s nice. That’s what family ought to do for you.”

“Agreed. But it sure is rare.”

Do you support (and enjoy support) from your siblings? Where is your Mercury?

skip to Dreams, Nightmares and Saturn in the 12th House