I am starting to despise the idea of wishful thinking. For the last couple years all that I had wished for was to experience something real, something that I could learn from, something that I could use as fodder for writing. A few days ago I got what I had asked for and I rue the day that I wished for it. 

There is a family friend of ours, Jane, whom I always called Auntie. She is a dear friend of my mother and her siblings and she became part of out family through proximity. I sort of grew up with her son, James. We used to do everything together until he and his mom moved to Hudson last year. While in Hudson last week he was struck by a drunk driver and suffered severe head trauma. He was conscious in the hospital for a while, but the doctors put him into a coma to let his body recover. As soon as I heard I drove to the hospital where he was held to visit him in the ICU. My first thought was that he would spend a few weeks maybe a month or two in the hospital until he recovered and I thought “That sucks. He’s going to have to make up a semester of school.” 

As the day progressed the news became less and less hopeful and my brain became less and less attached to my body. 

“There’s still a chance. I wouldn’t give up hope.” 

“What the hell does that mean?” I thought. “Hope that he’s going to live?” 

…

“We need to relieve pressure in the brain or there may be serious consequences.”

I screamed in my head. “Like what? Brain damage? Organ failure? Death?” 

…

News

Bad

…

News

Bad

…

News

Bad

…

20 hours later the doctor told us that his brain had swollen so much that it had “gone poof” and there was no hope for recovery. He was gone. My childhood friend, the guy I looked up to, the nicest and most amiable person you would ever meet was gone. Some guy who drank too much haphazardly took him away from me. From my family. From his mother. It seemed so wrong, so sick and so cruel that I just rejected the thought all together. I understood what was happening, but some part of my mind was convinced that it wasn’t real. All the same, when the final, swift, yet inarticulate blow from that man in the white coat and grey suit struck us, I fell. Hard. I wept as I had never wept before. And as before, my brain had shut off. Now I was running solely on emotion. I was angry. I was livid. I felt a collapsing sadness for him. I felt injustice. I felt compassion and such empathy for his mother. I felt as though everyone else knew about this but me. It seemed an elaborate joke. I felt…hungry…and that made me feel guilt, that my body would be so irreverent that it would bother me with something so trivial as hunger. I felt helpless.  

But this was not the end. His brain had gone, yes, but his body was still strong. However, it was only a matter of time before his sturdy frame would go as well. Only a matter of time before it would collapse into itself and be buried and eventually forgotten. Not this year or maybe even this century, but eventually. Eventually, no one will remember who this person was. It seemed silly and fruitless to toil for nothing when life can be snapped up so quickly without regard or honor. 

In an hour or two, with the machines turned off, he transmuted from a person into a statistic, into a tally mark for the department of highway safety.

Have you ever watched someone die? Have you ever seen their face fade from pinkish red to grey-green? Have you ever seen a man’s eyes hold a soul and then suddenly not? Have you ever seen a mother crawl into bed with a corps and weep over the thick inanimate shell that used to be her son?

I begged for an experience. I begged for something to happen to me. What fresh hell have I released through my wishes? 

I’ve made my decision. I am not going back to school. There is no way I will subject myself to that dross when there are far more important things in this world. When my mind left my body that day, it hovered for a while several hundred feet in the air and I saw a slightly more accurate scope of things. I can no longer keep my focus down at the miniscule. This has awakened me to what matters.  

– Jeremy