Please Don't Make Me Sorry for Forgiving You Again (Jeremy Ahn)

[jeremy_ahn]

"Please Don’t Make Me Sorry for Forgiving You Again"
by
Jeremy Ahn


Regarding our argument last night, I feel ashamed of my harsh, hasty words I lashed out against you in what I felt at the time, was justified self-defense. I feel sorry for collapsing your cranium in with a Starbucks coffee thermos made in Taiwan. I even apologized to the Starbucks staff for denting the bottom of their merchandise. And though it was a display model only, I offered to buy it out of my own pocket, even though I am so financially destitute, homeless people pity me and shake their heads at me when we pass each other and they turn their noses up and look sideways at me over the boulder of their warted nostrils as they push their diamond-studded stolen shopping carts.

I rode in the ambulance with you after lying by saying I was your relative. I held your hand during the pothole journey of the drive.

At the hospital, they wouldn’t let me go inside the emergency room with you, despite my frantic shrieks to the fools, “HE’S MY BROTHER,
“HE’S MY BROTHER,
“HE’S MY BROTHER”

Followed by a sobbed whimper, “I’M THAT MAN’S BROTHER. And I just want to be there for him, when he needs me. I need to be there for him, because HE NEEDS ME.”

I call the people keeping me out fascists and bureaucrats and anti-family.

I point at each of them erratically, wildly shouting, “YOU ARE NOT PRO-LIFE, YOU ARE NOT PRO-LIFE.”

I so frustrate everybody in the hospital that they transfer that exhausted contempt onto you, thinking we’re really related, and subconsciously intentionally give in to the medical equivalent of road rage, performing aggressive surgery on your organs like the haphazard operation scene in Catch-22.

After all the incisions and snips and rearranged organs in the digestive-tract-for-a-pancreas and bladder-for-lungs procedure has been declared a success, and the doctors are having their pictures taken for Time magazine, I sneak inside to the room where they are letting you rest and recover.

I sit next to the side of you on their never-washed-mattress techno bed that looks like it’s in the middle of doing a sit-up, and it’s too lazy to complete the action, but not lazy enough to just lie back down again, so it is forever in limbo: stuck in the stale state.

How hopeless…

I reach to take your hand in my own as I try to make ours shake hands in friendship, and I say, “I forgive you.”

I also apologize, and tell you, “I’m sorry… But I was just having a bad day. I was fired from my full-time job at Wal-Mart. And I was laid off from my part-time job at Christy’s. And I found out my wife just left me, but that is OK, because she was not my wife. And that is OK because I do not have to pay alimony.
“And that is fantastic, because I do not have money.
“But that is terribly depressing, because I need money to live.
“But that is OK if I don’t, because I do not have a life.
“And without a life, there is no point in living…
“But money can solve all that, but it won’t.
Not for me.
“Because I will always be worthless and unknown.
“And will never be published in anything. But—
“But I want you to know,
“I love you, man.”

I tell you all these things, as I funnel myself into your heart as I hold your hand, only now realizing how cold and firm your hand has grown. Then I notice the flat-line tone that has been droning on.

And on.

And on.

For the past half minute. And I know only now that you passed away 27 seconds ago.

A nurse comes running into the room and she pushes past me by your side, at the side of the bed, and as she tries to resuscitate you, a doctor comes in and now he’s the one in charge, and he pushes the nurse out of the way, the way she pushed me out of the way. That’s when I exit the room, giving them privacy, I go to another patient’s room, and see she is sleeping. I sit at a chair beside her bed and turn on her television.

I sit and watch with the volume on low. I stare at the screen, trying to read lips.
No closed captioning available. This is not even a flat screen TV, despite the 2009 mandatory HD-only broadcasting, these hospital TVs have not made the conversion.

As I sit watching but not paying attention to the on-screen antics of Charles in Charge, I wonder how they bypassed this regulation.

Then I think of you, and how you can no longer enjoy Primetime reruns of obscure network programming, and how you died alone, with no one to be there with you, though I was there with you, and I did not even know you had left.

But I wanted you to know, before you went and moved on, that you were loved, in this life, too.



I love you, man

I love you, man

I love you, man



I love you.



-----------------------

thank you for reading my story.

[montsnmags]

See, I like that. I could read stuff like that all day until my eyes bled grey-matter.

[Sparrow]

I enjoyed that!

[jeremy_ahn]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

See, I like that. I could read stuff like that all day until my eyes bled grey-matter.

montsnmags: thank you for reading my story.
thank you for the props, even if just 'pity props'. i feel 'accomplished' with this feedback and appreciate it, bro.

[jeremy_ahn]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I enjoyed that!

sparrow: thank you for reading my story. thank you for "enjoying that! "
i appreciate it and feel a sense of accomplishment with this feedback.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by jeremy_ahn

montsnmags: thank you for reading my story.
thank you for the props, even if just 'pity props'. i feel 'accomplished' with this feedback and appreciate it, bro.

Mate, that's not "pity". Pity would be along the lines of "nice effort", or "shows promise" or a Stephen King endorsement (wait, no, that's not pity; that's payola). And I don't think you do feel "accomplished" based on little, old me's minor appreciation at all, since I suspect you're already "accomplished" within your particular sphere, but it's pretty swell of you to say so.

Here is an emoticon - - to show I mean no harm, and come in peace. Also, welcome to MR, mister writer-person. Enjoy your stay. Keep your hands inside the carriage at all times. Don't trust the gibbon.

Cheers,
The Gibbon Adrian.

[jeremy_ahn]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

Mate, that's not "pity". Pity would be along the lines of "nice effort", or "shows promise" or a Stephen King endorsement (wait, no, that's not pity; that's payola). And I don't think you do feel "accomplished" based on little, old me's minor appreciation at all, since I suspect you're already "accomplished" within your particular sphere, but it's pretty swell of you to say so.

Here is an emoticon - - to show I mean no harm, and come in peace. Also, welcome to MR, mister writer-person. Enjoy your stay. Keep your hands inside the carriage at all times. Don't trust the gibbon.

Cheers,
The Gibbon Adrian.

montsnmags: oh but bro, i *do* feel accomplishment at any feedback anywhere near liking my writing, bro. i don't know what 'sphere' you feel i'm 'accomplished' in bro... i live alone in a single room flat and survive on cereal and stealing wi-fi. i don't even have a tv and my computer is like 5 yrs old.

i really do appreciate any props i get, bro. sincerely mean that.
i'll illustrate...
this is a poem about my life, it's called 'i stare at the computer for long periods of time' - no exaggeration. i think i just misspelled 'exagerration'...?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58549

[dadioflex]

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