2 July 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2786: ethnic

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Mrs. Maggie Lee knew her husband was having a good therapy session that was truly going to help him if at some point he was open and relaxed enough to start laughing … so she was glad to hear Col. H.F. Lee laughing as his therapist helped him get a better understanding of how to set grief boundaries in his life. It wasn't a laughing matter at first, of course.

Captain Josiah Parker was considered among the best therapists the Veteran's Lodge had, and he always took the compliment in this way: “When I give my speech accepting whatever award comes with this, I'm thanking the Lord Jesus first, and Col. H.F. Lee, for the Former chose and empowered me, and the latter leaves me with no choice but to get good! Bonus points for the ethnic difference at this moment in Virginia – keeps us both on our toes with the different perspectives!”

There was also rank and age to consider too – a younger Black army captain counseling an older White army colonel in Lofton County would have been unthinkable in 1974, the year the colonel was born. Yet the colonel came from the first branch of the Lee family that had utterly repudiated its slave-owning past and had made a point of personally repudiating that part of his family legacy, and Capt. Parker worked up into all the room that gave him to help his patient with all his skill.

“Permission to make an impertinent statement for the greater therapeutic good, Colonel,” he had started that particular journey to laughter by saying.

“Granted,” Col. Lee had said.

“Do you realize that outside of military and leadership necessities, you truly have no idea of how intractable human nature really is?”

The colonel had considered that for a full minute.

“Explain,” he said.

“Let me put it to you this way: do you know what men your age are like who have not spent their entire lives controlling their innate depravity and mental hang-ups?”

The colonel considered that for a full minute.

“No. It explains a lot of things, though.”

“Colonel, I'll put this to you even another way; you are the second man in your family to have someone just walk up on you and hand you the care of something huge and know you aren't even going to think about asking for a raise, a change in title – the first person in your family got handed all of West Point as a colonel still making captain's wages, and then got handed off the whole Army of Northern Virginia in 1862 because Johnston got shot and G.W. Smith probably got ptomaine poisoning –.”

That was where Col. Lee started laughing.

“1862 is a little early for ptomaine poisoning in terms of rations, Captain,” he said, “but I see your point. I'm police chief in Big Loft, and this is the first time I've consciously thought about title or raise, because you're right – I'm doing the job because I know we cannot have the city and the county in flames, and there is no one else in a certain bankruptcy situation who Mr. Halleck could trust – and the fact that he, being Henry Halleck VII, is conservator of the BLPD and is on the other end of phone telling me, “All you have to say to me is, 'I need,' and I'll get Virginia to provide it, does make the point.”

“You are one of two in your family, Colonel, and really, one of one,” Capt. Parker said, “because your journey is your own, but most people aren't even close to on it. Do you ever get up in the morning and go out without thinking about coming home and getting everyone around you home?”

“Not in 29 years,” Col. Lee said. “I started at West Point at age 17, and all I was thinking about was getting to be 18 so I could get married to Vanessa, and making her, her family, and my family proud when I got home. She was younger so we had to wait a little more, but all I was ever thinking about was getting home.”

“And as time passed, there became levels to it,” Capt. Parker said.

“For 27 years after her death, I knew that I would see her and Henry Victor sometime after seeing the Lord, and I was willing to go at any moment, so long as I could hear 'Well done, My good and faithful servant' when I got home, and sometime down in eternity future, embrace them in peace, and have both of them be happy their lives and mine intersected – to not be ashamed of me. And of course, my grandparents were still alive, so whenever I visited, I had to have a good report. And then, of course, I graduated from West Point and went to Special Forces School, and then graduated that, and then got out there and had to get folks home for real.”

“Your brain wasn't even fully grown, Colonel, when you were working all of that out,” Capt. Parker said, “so you truly did lock your mind in with all of the above as it finished maturing around age 25. You are one of a kind. Not one other person in the world can think like you think. So, why do you think that Col. Gebhardt looked at his own family and realized, the way you do, what he was about to do to them when he was not thinking about getting even himself to anything you would even consider home?”

Col. Lee considered this.

“I consider what he did a betrayal,” he said, “but you're right. That's my perspective because of who I am. He never even glimpsed anything that I saw in him and his family – never even saw the value of the life he threw away. I could get him home to the United States. I did that while he was Major Gebhardt. I couldn't get him to the levels that I understand about that. He was not interested in that.”

“And this is what I need you to focus on, Colonel, in terms of boundaries. There are people who live to get home and hear 'Well done, My good and faithful servant.' That's you and me and people like us. There are people who are trying to get home, but we all fall down sometimes and need to be helped up on the way – and that's still people like you and me at different points in our lives. There are people who are lost right now but are searching for a way home because they are called – they don't understand it yet, but that was people like us in the past. We can help these three groups of people. That's enough to do in life, even thought of in terms of common grace, but stop right there. You literally drove 150 miles round trip to get Maj. Gebhardt safely to his physical home two days before he died – but that wasn't where he wanted to go.”

Col. Lee considered this for a long moment, and then said, “There is a passage of the Bible I can never read without weeping. When the Lord Jesus stood outside Jerusalem, Who He longed to gather into the kingdom promised in the Old Testament … but that generation refused, hanging on to their pride and their system of works. In letting them refuse, He let them choose all the consequences that were coming later. I have read Josephus several times. The Lord knew why He had told the women of Jerusalem to weep for themselves, and for their own children, and why He also wept for them and even those Who refused Him. He knew what they were choosing in rejecting him.”

The colonel paused, and then added, “Lees are held to be clairvoyant – perhaps it is true in Virginia, because we know our ground. You are only going to drive drunk in Lofton County so many times before you die when sober folks not paying attention drive off into Lake Esmeralda and off into the Blue Ridge and into tunnels too low for their trucks every other month in broad daylight because the roads are not set up for casual bad modern driving, and half the county roads haven't had their lighting updated in 50 years – oh, and bonus points for people thinking that during the pandemic they can drive faster because the roads are so empty. I told Gloria Gebhardt that her uncle had six months at best to play Roadside Russian Roulette. The first thing Ms. Gebhardt said when she called was, 'Well, you told me what was going to happen, Colonel, to the month, and it just happened.'

“It's hard when you can see it that far out,” Capt. Parker said, “but here's the thought about seeing it that far out, Colonel. Presume the Lord is letting you see things in advance – presume that your ability for pattern recognition is a bit more than just ingrained by habit. I've had this thought about you many times, but it's outside the scope of how I can help you except to point it up for the sake of discussion. So for the sake of discussion: presume some Lees are clairvoyant. If you see clearly what is going to happen in the future, and what you see is true, can you change it?”

“No,” Col. Lee said. “That is an entirely different perspective. I was discussing the Grandfather Paradox with one of my little Ludlow cousins yesterday, and this is a different version of the same issue. If I am clairvoyant, and what I see of the future is in fact true, I cannot change it.”

“Isaiah and Jeremiah and Daniel and them – they had to be told to stop praying for things they saw to be changed by the Lord because He wasn't going to change it,” Capt. Parker said. “That's a boundary they had to respect. All I'm saying is, respect the boundary, Col. Lee. You are majoring and overachieving on changing everything you can, but there's that part in St. Francis of Assisi's prayer about the serenity to accept the things you can't change, and wisdom to know the difference.”

Col. Lee considered this in silence for some minutes.

“I've always lived by the principle that I don't know if I can change it until I've made my utmost effort,” he said, “but a prophet's utmost effort is to clearly tell what he sees, and leave the outcome to God. I had not thought it this way before. There is indeed a boundary there.”

“Did you tell Col. Gebhardt what was likely to happen to him?” Capt. Parker said.

“Of course,” Col. Lee said. “I told him last September we would be at his funeral in a year if he kept it up, and none of us wanted to do that.”

“Stop right there, Colonel. You told him that in September 2019?”

“Yes – in fact it was the Saturday after the Ridgeline Fire – Sept. 16, it was.”

Capt. Parker shook his head.

“I happen to know because my cousin is on the chaplain team – Col. Gebhardt's funeral will be Friday, Sept. 16, because the mortuary needs that much extra reconstruction time.”

Col. Lee put his head in both his hands.

“So, what we know from today is that you need additional spiritual as well as mental and emotional support,” Capt. Parker said, “but remember that unlike your late colleague, you are committed to getting the help you need and are on a monitored, effective prescription regimen. You can do this, Colonel. You can learn to respect the boundary and live a healthier life because you know what you are dealing with now. You're not choosing to spiral out of control. You are looking out for yours the way you know you must. You really can't do anything for anyone who isn't so committed but to warn them, and you've done that. What we have to explore is mitigating the harm to you at the point of the warning and starting the process of releasing control of the outcome there because this is not a military situation – you are actually no longer responsible for anyone you served with to the degree you tend to think you are.”

Col. Lee removed his hands from a face in anguish, and clenched his fists … his whole body shook in a profound “NO!” … but then, he turned his tear-streaked face upwards, and opened his hands … surrender.

“OK,” he said after several moments of composing himself. “You are right, Captain. I have to learn. That is all there is to that.”

“OK,” Capt. Parker said. “You think that's enough for today?”

“Plenty. I'll see you for our regular appointment. Good night, Captain.”

“Good night, Colonel.”

Afterward, Capt. Parker took two generic pain pills and went to bed, with a headache and exhausted – but satisfied. Nobody worked him harder than Col. Lee. Nobody justified the labor more – and overachieved, for the next day in his mailbox, Capt. Parker found a card – a thank you card, actually – upon the front of which was just thank you, and inside, someone had drawn a set of praying hands and written inside of them the Serenity Prayer, right next to a 'tip,' since Capt. Parker was paid by the Veteran's Lodge, worth his wage for two hours with the note: “Motrin Money and a vacation from me when the pandemic is over – thank you, Captain.”

Capt. Parker snapped a picture of all that and sent it back to Col. Lee with the note, “Listen, Colonel One-of-One – you can't get rid of me that easily!” and delighted Mrs. Lee again, for there was Col. Lee again laughing.