Feb. 1, 2010 - Pondering our choice.

When official court papers are served there is usually a road and a driveway for the server to drive up to, there is usually a doorbell or a wooden door to knock upon, and so I can hardly imagine the horror of the poor guy who had to wander through the woods behind our house looking for Lester Buckingham’s bizarre wicker palace.

I can also hardly imagine the look on Lester’s face when he received his notice, since avoidance of the hellish red tape of “polite society” has been his life’s work. 

And I’m sure it was a sinking feeling and a terrible moment for him, to discover that the construction of his whole life would soon be crashing down around him (literally).

Truth be told, the thought of what he must be going through psychologically makes me somewhat ashamed of our actions, but then again life is not fair on any level (especially when it comes to property rights), and certainly I have worked very hard in my life to achieve things such as being able to own a summer house—all the education, all the work, all the savings, all the playing by the rules of Lester’s “polite society” has given June and I the resources to acquire our house and it wasn’t us who deceived Lester when we bought the house, but he who quietly deceived we, and who by his silence deceived Alice, our real estate agent. 

He surely could have announced himself to her, for certainly he knew what she was up to when she came visiting with potential buyers. No doubt he’d seen her around.  The upsetting fact is that he could have given us the choice to buy a house with him behind it or not to, but he chose to remain hidden, which is the reason he has gotten himself into the mess he now finds himself in—which is why he has no right to “adverse possession”. He has no one to blame but himself.

Of course even the most heinous offenders of law and order will often blame the outside world for their behaviors and for the consequences of their behaviors, which is a truth I know all too well from my years of work in public mental health. 

I’m sure Lester would rationalize that his traumas in Viet Nam account for his need to have isolated himself in a shroud of secrecy for all these years, or that his years of self-imposed isolation have altered his sense of reality and therefore judgment.  

And perhaps all this is true, but does that mean our family ought to be punished for the sins society and history have inflicted on him?  Should we have relied solely on the sympathetic fact of his POW / PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) status in the determination of our course?  Did we make a disgusting bourgeois decision to have him evicted?   Should our liberal hearts have bled for him more??  I don’t know. None of this is easily answered in my physician’s conscience (do no harm) but in the balancing act of tough mathematical decision-making, I believe that we made the right choice.

I of course wonder how you, my blog reader (if there in fact is a you and I am not just a tree falling in the forest??) judge me for following through with our eviction proceedings… 

I know June seems remarkably settled in our choice, considering the complexity of it.  And although Juliet has resisted the decision, she has also begun to grow suspicious that Lester did something to Bono (our dog) and so her sympathy for the kind-weird man who brought her a “playpretty” (finch in a box) has wavered.

In any case, it turns out Weissman couldn't get Lester served before the weekend (Lester was no where to be found) so the court case will be delayed a bit.  But he was served this morning, Monday, and now we will have to wait till next Monday to meet him in court.   

And just now we spent the better part of dinner AGAIN discussing the moral-ethical implications of what we are endeavoring, and for the most part I am convinced we are doing the right thing. 

Onward....