Oh, my brother... do I feel this pain.
Growing up my older sister had a childhood friend and my mom was good friends with this girl's mother. My sister's friend was an only child and her mother was a widow....husband KIA in Vietnam.
I'm guessing this is around 1979 or 80, I'm a kid and my sister and I go on an out of state vacation with the mom and the daughter.
My sister and her friend are 4 years older and when you're about 6 or 7 like I was, well man that age difference might as well be a gulf. So, I didn't fit in... and the my sister and her friend bullied me a little on the trip... but it was nothing, nothing,
at all even compared to the shitty thing I did.
Some hot afternoon on the trip and I'm mad because my sister's friend says something to me that I don't like. I tell her she's a bastard because she doesn't have a dad.
Even then I know that is not the definition of a bastard but I say it to her anyway just to be an asshole. She runs off crying and a few minutes later her mom walks up to me.
I will never, ever, forget how calm and gracious she was. This is how you adult.
She explained to me the definition of a bastard and also why her daughter wasn't one.
Her father?
Capt. Stephen Bennett
KIA VIetnam
Congressional Medal of Honor.
Gentlemen, it did not take me a few years to forgive myself.
It took a few decades.