I love you, but...

A soldier was finally returning home to the United States after having fought a war in Vietnam. He phoned his parents from San Francisco and said; "Mom, Dad, I'm coming home, but I have a favour to ask. I've a friend I would like to bring home with me.

"Sure," his parents replied, "We'd love to meet him."

"There's something you should know" The son continued. "He was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped on a landmine and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere to else to go, and I want him to come live with us."

"I'm sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live."

"No, Dad, I want him to live with us."

"Son," said the father, "you don't know what you're asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden to us. We have our own lives to live, and we can't let something like this interfere with our lives.

"I think you should come home and forget about this guy. He'll find a way to get by on his own."

At that point, the son hung up and his parents heard nothing more from him. A few days later however, they received a call from the San Francisco police: their son had died after falling from a building. They believed it was a suicide.

The grief-stricken parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to identify their son's body.

They recognised him, but to their horror, they also discovered something they didn't know. He had only one arm and one leg.

(Extracted from STAR newspaper 20 March 2005, article submitted by Clement Chan Zhi Li)