The Choice

What did you have to give up to get here?”
“I had to be away from my family a lot.”
“What else?”
“When you have six thousand men relying on you for their lives,
you don’t have the luxury of being afraid.”
“You’ve had to give up your feelings. To give up letting others see
them.”
He nodded.
“You said before that dying is easy. Do you ever wish you were
dead?”
“All the fucking time.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“My kids.” His face contorted in anguish. “But they think I’m a
monster. They’d be better off without me.”
“Do you want to know how I see it? I think your children would be
very much better off with you. With you, the man I am coming to
know and admire. e man who can risk talking about his fear. e
man who has the guts to forgive and accept himself.”
He was silent. Perhaps this was the ĕrst moment he had
encountered the possibility of freeing himself from the guilt he felt
over the past.
“I can’t help you go back in time to save your troops. I can’t
guarantee your children’s safety. But I can help you protect one
person: yourself.”
He stared at me.
“But to save yourself, you are going to have to give up the image of
who you think you’re supposed to be.”
“I hope this works,” he said.
Shortly aer, the colonel was reassigned and his family le El Paso.
I don’t know what happened to them. I hope something good, as I
cared for them deeply. But why am I thinking of them now? What