Have you burned one of your bridges yet today?….
Lillie McFerrin posts a “Five Sentence Fiction” prompt.
This week it is: Abandoned
from Lillie McFerrin
An Unabridged Conversation
It’s a bridge, and bridges are supposed to link two different places.
It’s also considered a figure of speech which means a connection between two people – such as, “don’t burn your bridges.”
In this case, this bridge hasn’t been used in years, and there aren’t places to bridge to anymore on either side.
I’m not sure which went first, the places or the bridge.
I know this though, the bridge between us went a long time ago.
Randy Mazie
The Writer's Village 
The “ain’t’s” don’t seem to fit with the rest of the story, since the rest of the language isn’t colloquial. Even if using “ain’t”, “there ain’t no places anymore” would seem to me to fit better if you said, “there ain’t places anymore” or “there ain’t places no more” and avoid that annoying double negative. Just my $.02. 🙂
janet
Isn’t that the truth!
I’d rewrite it if I were me – but I haven’t been myself lately.
But thanks for the feedback – you’re absolutely right.
Are you not feeling well or are you joshin’ with me? If the former, I hope you’re better soon. If the latter, then you are yourself. 🙂
janet
It’s a little bit of both, Janet.
For the past three weeks, my 87-year-old mother has been in the hospital. She fell and broke her neck and bruised her spinal cord. It left her paralyzed on the right side about 90%, and paralyzed about 20% on her left side. She had already been depressed before this and verbalized wanting to die. And although she allowed the doctor to perform surgery on her neck, she also verbalized that she wished that she might die on the operating table.
For the ten days after surgery, she only spoke of her wanting to go into hospice; and I kept putting off the decision attempting to give her time to recover and possibly change her mind, as well as allowing for a miracle. A psychiatrist had deemed her incompetent. I am her surrogate; and I finally signed her into hospice last Tuesday.
She could not swallow, she was refusing a feeding tube, and hospice seemed the best way to go – which, as I said, she wanted. However, once I signed the papers and she asked me when she was going, and I said, this was last Tuesday, that she was going into hospice inpatient that evening, and her response to me was, “Too soon.”
Needless to say, if she wasn’t already dying I would’ve killed her myself!
Since then she had been semi-comatose for about three days, and then these past three days she has “spiked” – meaning that she has come back “to life”. She is back swallowing/drinking a little bit of fluids and eating a little bit of puréed foods – and back to her 87-year-old irritable self. Which, if you can understand what I might mean, is heartwarming.
We are cautiously happy to see her recover, yet preparing ourselves that this might be a temporary forward movement.
What I see in my writing, and you see too, is a reflection of my being tired from working a full-time job, taking time off and my off-time to be with my mom, consoling my sister who actually is my mother’s primary caregiver and for which this has been a terrible ordeal to say the least. Lastly, and this is not about me, but as you may remember I suffered the flu in January, a gastrointestinal virus while on the cruise ship, and for these past 10 days I have had a cold. I have not yet fully recovered myself.
I count my blessings though every day for the strength that I do have, for what I’m able to do and able to give. I pray for my mother and for her comfort; and for my sister to have the strength and the inner ability to continue to care, as she wants to continue to provide care, for my mother.
So, my writing has suffered a little. Not a big deal. Life, in all its struggles, continues to go on, but ultimately I/we are blessed to be able to love, to work, to give, and to be a part of it.
I think you might’ve gotten more than you asked for with this answer. Smile.
Randy
You’ve got a lot on a lot of plates, Randy. And writing is certainly not more important then people, even though keep it up to some extent is probably good for you. I’ll keep all of you in my prayers and hope things calm down a bit soon!
janet
thank you.
Writing is therapeutic and cathartic
Okay – I made some changes. I think that might work better.
Anyone reading this for the first time I’ve made changes to the original based on Janet’s comments in my own sense of wrongness about. So what you’re reading now is a different piece than the one that Janet commented on.
Randy
I think this read much better and not because I made the suggestions! It’s all of a piece now. 🙂
janet
I’m reading the revised edition… 😉
Very well done, Randy; though sad… as is your current reality…
All the best to you…
Thank you, Carolyn
Considering all your comments above, for which I offer my best wishes for you and your family, it’s a fascinating piece Randy. Your tiredness does come through in your words, but that’s what makes the piece work so well, those broken bridges and a couple who probably don’t want to mend them!
This is a beautiful piece – particularly the middle sentence.
I don’t know how you’re able to write with everything else going on in your life – I couldn’t manage it. All good wishes to you.
I have to.
It’s as innate as breathing.
Or having a soul mate.
I wouldn’t go a day without talking to her, touching, loving, kissing, exploring…
I love this piece, as it says it all very succinctly yet powerfully.
thank you.