MEMORY BRACELET

Inspired in true events. I worked as Medical Interpreter for 2 years. I welcome feedbacks. THANK YOU FOR READING. I HOPE YOU LIKE IT.

Rare times I see a man with jewelry. I see them with a wedding ring or just a ring. Sometimes a necklace. But this time I saw a resident with a silver colored bangle, nonetheless, with a cuff bangle. At  times my curiosity is unbearable; I try to let go but it's just nearly impossible. It will eat me alive if I don't ask. Especially when I will continue to see the person. If it's just one day I will most likely forget about it. If I get a chance to talk to the person on a daily basis, I try to let them get familiar with me before asking what I want to know. 

This student or practitioner is in his thirties. He is a white male with a great personality. He is not that tall and definitely doesn’t run six miles in the morning like soldiers do when they are in active service. He has light blue eyes, with a sincere look and smile. He is super amicable and loves to talk and ask questions.  I would never have guessed that he was a veterean. 

There is always someone in each clinic that makes the time go by fast. He is one of them. It really helps to work with friendly staff, especially in this clinic, where it is all about cutting nails, ulcers and stinky feet. I have to tolerate that in the foot clinic. Medicine has a prestige but most of the time it’s a nasty job. Those ulcers are really rotten meat; they make the whole clinic stink. Some people cannot tolerate the smell and vomit. Sometimes the head nurse would have to spray febreeze or some other air freshener to make the odor go away. The odor in the hall could be that unbearable. 

This is not the first time I have seen an ulcer or a gangrene on someone’s deathbed. I saw the toes and back ulcer my grandma had. I have a very vivid memory of her as moribund and I couldn’t believe those were part of her. Her toes were like those of mummies. They were so dark and I will never forget when the doctor came to visit her at home and told us to be careful when we touch her or move her because they could fall off! Have mercy for my young soul. 

My grandmother was around seventy years old and seemed not to be moved frequently when she was in the hospital which caused the bed ulcers. I couldn't believe what I saw on her back. It was like she was burned, not red but a huge white ulcer from the coxis to middle back. That was one of the saddest things I have ever experienced. 

My mother tried her best to heal her ulcers and make her talk but my grandmother was moribund for being as talkative as an active woman. She wasn't talking, moving or doing anything. Those few months I will never forget. I remember that she died around election time. Her political party won and I talked to her but she didn't react. When the moment came, the doctor told my mother to prepare herself. He was very empathic, one of those doctors that should be in that profession, not for the money or the prestige of being uncompensable. 

This resident was an orthopedic practitioner. I don't pay so much attention to that matter. What I do know is that he evaluates and asks the surgeon or the doctor and she just does whatever is recommended. I guess he was like the nurse practitioner of that field. 

One day when we were waiting for the doctor, I asked him about the engraved metal bangle. That is the name of my platoon that died in the Middle East. I was speechless, embarrassed to be so nosy. I didn’t need to ask more questions. This was his way to honor those who didn't come home.  

Apology was justified for my curiosity and I said thank you for your service. To learn what this bracelet was about was painful and I know that he will carry their memories forever as someone who has lost someone important and wants to remember them. He didn’t show sadness or pain. He was open about it.  

I later realized that after losing a significant other, most people just get rid of their stuff or put them away and they don’t want to see them for some time. They don’t want to remember, or have something as mourning jewelry. That is the first thing I do after the end of a relationship. I get rid of everything; jewelry, clothes, anything that reminds me of the other person. It doesn’t matter if it is a friend or ex partner.  

My mother does the same thing with everything. I remember there were some pictures of my grandfather and uncle and she ripped them up and put them in the trash because it made her sad. One thing, if not the only thing she hates, is sadness and crying. I do not have or have even seen a letter from my grandmother. She liked to write letters to her daughter. What I remember is that her handwriting was just beautiful, open, cursive and grammatically perfect. All that for a woman who didn't finish middle school. 

My grandmother, like most of our people, lived in extreme poverty, in houses that didn't have any tiles or cement outside. There was very little clothing, no shoes, no fridge or TV, and no bathroom, just a latrine. I always think of their hardship for survival. That's why I think that my mother doesn't like to retain memorabilia. I believe that when death comes, we get sad not for the person but for ourselves. We feel more lonely. Just a part of this difficult journey gets harder when someone who makes us feel happy or loved leaves us. 

“Don't cry because it's over, cry because it happened”.  We will all die. That's the only guarantee we have when we are born. We don't know if we will be here on earth for a week or for eighty years. 

Author's Note

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Reviews

[JayG]

Since you’re planning to query your work I took a look, and have some comments.

First, edit. Lots of things need fixing. One suggestion is to have your computer read it aloud, a few paragraphs at a time. Awkward phrasing and such things will jump out at you.

• Rare times I see a man with jewelry. I see them with a wedding ring or just a ring.

Look at this as a reader must. Someone unknown, of unknown gender, in an unknown location, and for unknown reasons, is commenting in a way that supplies no context to a reader. And, it’s inaccurate. I see men with an earring all the time. And on the beach, or with an open collar shirt, there are religious medallions of all kinds visible. Bracelets, on the other hand, are rare. While it’s quite possible that this is true, and you know the man who wore it, most people will think of it as strange, you you might give thought to it being on a chain around his neck, noteworthy because it didn’t look like a religious emblem, or something meant to be decorative.

And as punctuated with a period, as shown, you have two sentence fragments. That needs fixing.

That aside, the point is that this person sees a man with an unusual piece of jewelry. Why waste the first line of the story telling people what they already know, that men don’t wear a lot of jewelry? It’s irrelevant to the story.

• But this time I saw a resident with a silver colored bangle, nonetheless, with a cuff bangle.

Way too generic. And since a bangle is defined as a disk attached to a bracelet, what’s a “cuff” bangle?” And why specify “silver colored?” Why does it matter if it’s silver or only silver colored? Who cares if it’s brass or painted wood? It's somethig interesting, purpose unknown. You’re focused on reporting and explaining, when the reader is seeking impressions. Something like, “He appeared to be wearing a charm bracelet.” Who cares what it’s made of at this point?

Our training in writing technique, through our school days was focused on reporting and explaining because the goal of nonfiction is informational. Fiction, though is focused on emotion. Our goal isn’t to make the reader know, it’s to make the reader feel what the protagonist is feeling in the moment they call “now.”

• This student or practitioner is in his thirties.

You already identified him as a resident.

• He is a white male with a great personality.

A moment ago the narrator saw the person wearing the bangle, and said that if they get to know the person they’ll ask. But suddenly, they know him well enough to rate his personality…and haven’t asked? Makes no sense based on what you said. And why does his race matter to the story?

More than that, because we don’t know our narrator's gender, and what the criteria is for making such an evaluation, there’s no way to know why an overall report on him matters. If he’s central to the story, as he seems to be at this point (but really isn’t), won’t the reader decide that he has a good personality by how he behaves? And since he actually has no real interaction with the narrator, why does anye data on him matter enough to mention? In general, you want to avoid a talking head situation. Show, don’t tell.

Look at this from a reader’s viewpoint. There’s been nothing happening in the story. We open with someone unknown telling us they saw a man with a bangle, and wonder why he’s wearing it. Then, the narrator rambles on about lots of things that seem unrelated to the bangle. In fact, 566 words pass before we get back to the bangle that seemed to be the purpose of the story, but is, in reality, just an excuse for more reflection. We learn that, “Those ulcers are really rotten meat,” and read 305 words of rambling personal thoughts on the various kinds of ulcers. But before we can have “those” ulcers, we have to have more than one kind, to provide a reason to specify these and those.

And after we finally learn what the charm symbolizes, the resident vanishes from the narrative as the narrator goes back to talking about grandma in the abstract. So in reality he could have said it's for his dead wife, or a million other things that would trigger the narrator's line of thought.

So in the end, and I mean no insult, I have to ask: Where’s the story? Nothing happened but that someone unknown talked about personal viewpoints and memories for which the reader has little context.

But of more importance, you’re transcribing yourself leaning back in a comfortable chair and talking about things personally meaningful, in general. But in that, two things work against you:

First is that when you tell a story to someone, aloud, how you tell the story matters as much as what you say, because the performance is where the emotional part of the story lies. As you perform, you change intensity and tempo, you may sound angry, loving, frightened, and brave, as the story demands. But none of that emotional content makes it to the page which reproduced neither sound not vision. And the reader has no way of knowing how you want them to read a given line. Add in that they can’t see your expressions change, your gestures, or body language. To hear what the reader gets, in place of your performance, have your computer read this story aloud.

The second problem is that because you know the details of what you’re discussing, intimately, you’ll leave out detail that seems too obvious to mention. And when you read it back, you'll automatically fill in the missing detail and never note its loss. But the reader? For them, it will seem that important parts of the story remain in your head when they should have been on the page.

In the end, though, they’re not short stories, because there’s neither action nor plot. They’re essays—musings on what matters to you. Nothing wrong with that, except that because they do matter to you, the emotional touch-points are there as you read. But the the reader?

A story, be it short or novel length is a series of scenes that work to form a cohesive whole. In general, they’re about a problem that someone must solve. That can run from someone trying to get a date for the prom to saving the world. Stories are intense, personal, and filled with things going wrong for the protagonist that make the reader worry, and speculate on what the protagonist should do. The writing doesn’t inform the reader, it involves them in the action, in real-time. Done well, if someone throws a rock at the protagonist’s head the reader ducks. And part of the reason they do is that it seems to be happening to us as we read, moment by moment.

So in terms of this story, and the others, because it lacks a plot, I’m afraid I don’t know who you’d submit this to, as a short story.

I do have a suggestion if you would like to write fiction:

Because all professions, like your own, are learned in addition to our schooldays skills, and because fiction-writing is a profession, some time spent acquiring the specialized skills is advised. And while the library’s fiction-writing section is filled with books by pros in writing, publishing, and teaching, my suggestion is to begin by picking up a copy of Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. It’s a warm easy read, and one of the best books I know of on the basics of creating scenes that sing to the reader, and stitching them into a cohesive whole. Deb won’t make a pro of you. That’s your job. But she will give you the tools and an understanding of what they can do for you.

I know this is terrible news, given that you were thinking of submitting these pieces in hope of publication as short stories, but I thought you would want to know. And you did ask, so...

For an overview of the differences in approach and objectives between fiction and what we learned to write in school, you might look at a few of the articles in my blog.

But whatever you decide, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

[tyruswarwick]

You are wrong. I am grateful for your feedback. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your honesty, there is always room for improvement.

[Jean Lagace]

Fine little piece. Just the right amount of words and paragraphs. Getting rid of stuff after a relationship. Souvenir, souvenir... This is sad. Hope you didn't need to do it often.