😮 I removed the handcuffs from a prisoner and recognized the tattoo of my dead father. He died in Vietnam three months before I was born; I never knew him. 💔 And this 67-year-old man, accused of stealing medicine from a pharmacy, had the same military badge on his arm that my mother has had framed in the living room for forty-eight years.

of the war. He ended up like that because of one of those four. Because of one of the ones laughing in my photo.

I asked him to stop for a moment. Not for him. For me.

I took out my phone and looked for the photo I’d taken years ago of the living room picture, the one my mom dusts off every Sunday. Four boys hugging, laughing, before the plane. All my continue reading …